Vet groups criticize ‘plan’:

America

Eight major veterans’ organizations on Saturday urged Congress to provide emergency money to the Department of Veterans Affairs without cutting other VA programs as the House moved quickly to address a budget shortfall that threatened medical care for thousands of patients.

Their joint statement comes after the House Veterans Affairs Committee unveiled a plan Friday that would shift $2 billion from other VA programs to continue funding the department’s Choice program. Put in place after a 2014 wait-time scandal at the Phoenix VA hospital, Choice provides veterans federally paid medical care outside the VA and is a priority of President Donald Trump. To offset spending, the VA would trim pensions for some veterans and collect fees for housing loans.

The veterans’ groups criticized the plan as unacceptable privatization. They urged the House to embrace a bill that “ensures veterans’ healthcare is not interrupted in the short term, nor threatened in the long term.”

A House vote was scheduled for Monday. VA Secretary David Shulkin has warned that without congressional action, the Choice program would run out of money by mid-August.

“Veterans’ healthcare benefits have already been ‘paid for’ through the service and sacrifice of the men and women who wore our nation’s uniform, millions of whom suffered injuries, illnesses and lifelong disabilities,” the groups said. “If new funding is directed only or primarily to private-sector ‘Choice’ care without any adequate investment to modernize VA, the viability of the entire system will soon be in danger.”

In the Senate, the Republican chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, has not said whether he is willing to adopt the House proposal. The panel’s top Democrat, Jon Tester of Montana, introduced a bill earlier this month that would provide equal levels of extra funding for Choice and VA programs. (AP)