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For years, VVA and eight other VSOs
that comprise the Partnership for Veterans Healthcare Budget
Reform have been knocking our collective heads against a
bipartisan wall of opposition in Congress in an attempt to
achieve assured, or mandatory, funding of veterans health
care. We’ve been told, flat
out, that Congress is not going to opt for any form of mandatory
funding, having learned its lesson from making funding for
Medicaid and Medicare mandatory.
If the object is to get to
the other side of the wall and you can’t get through
it, then you’ve got to
find a way around it, or over it, or under it. The Partnership
thinks it has found that way, through advance appropriation
for health care funding.
What does this mean? Initially, it
means that Congress would fund the Veterans Health Administration
(VHA) for two years. That way, VA hospital and VISN directors
will know what their budgets will be at least by the beginning
of each fiscal year, even if Congress can’t get its
budget act together and pass appropriations legislation on
time—a rare
and wondrous thing when it actually occurs, as it has this
year. Congress has failed to approve a new VA appropriation
bill on time for 19 of the past 21 years
Over the past several months, the Partnership, led by folks
from Disabled American Veterans (DAV), has met with members
of Congress and with key staff at both the House and Senate
Veterans’ Affairs Committees, promoting the advance
appropriation concept. Congress has greeted this concept
favorably.
In September, SVAC Chair Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii)
and HVAC Chair Bob Filner (D-Calif.) introduced legislation
that would adopt advance appropriation for funding veterans
health care. The Partnership worked closely with the bill
sponsors in drafting the legislation.
The bills, called the Veterans
Health Care Budget Reform Act, would require the Government
Accountability Office to audit VA’s budget forecasting
model and report to Congress and the public on the integrity
and accuracy of the model. With these estimates in hand,
Congress would be greatly enhanced in its ability to develop
and enact sufficient funding levels for VA health care.
In the Senate, cosponsors were Olympia
Snowe (R-Maine), Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.),
and both of Alaska’s
senators, Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens. In the House, cosponsoring
the legislation were Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Michael Michaud
(D-Maine), and Phil Hare (D-Ill.).
Rep. Hare, a member of
the House Veterans’ Affairs
Committee and the author of legislation to make veterans’ health
care a mandatory spending item in the federal budget, praised
the introduction of what is being called the Veterans Health
Care Budget Reform Act.
“I believe assured funding should be the law of the
land,” Hare said. “But I also want a bill that
can move quickly through the process. The goal is to help
our veterans.”
Hare is the author of the Assured Funding
for Veterans Health Care Act—a bill to make VA health
care a mandatory spending item within the federal budget
as is the case with Social Security or Medicare. It has 126
co-sponsors but has not seen action in the House.
Go to www.fundingforvets.org for more information about advance appropriation.
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2011, Vietnam Veterans of America. All Rights Reserved. 8719 Colesville Road, Suite 100, Silver Spring, MD 20910