Privatization Warning A VA advisory panel issues a red alert on outsourcing.
BY SUZANNE GORDON, STEVE EARLY APRIL 11, 2024
When the Department of Defense (DOD) or U.S. intelligence agencies face a crisis, they often assemble a task force to conduct a review and recommend solutions. In response to cost overruns on care for nine million patients of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently convened such a high-level “Red Team.”
The panel of six health care leaders includes former VHA undersecretaries for health, ex-DOD officials with military health experience, and prominent health care system executives. The group conferred with VA leaders in Washington, collected relevant budget data, and pored over reams of peer-reviewed studies. It then issued a 24-page executive roundtable report entitled “The Urgent Need to Address VHA Community Care Spending and Access Strategies” (emphasis added). Although the report was released to top VA leaders in late March, it has not yet been publicly released. The Prospect’s repeated requests for the report itself or information about it were ignored.
Rarely has a group of inside-the-Beltway experts gotten to the point so quickly or sounded the alarm so clearly. In the report, obtained by the Prospect before its public release, the group unanimously concluded: “The increasing number of Veterans referred to community providers … threaten to materially erode the VA’s direct care system.” Without a course correction, they said, mass closures of VA clinics or certain services could ensue, “eliminating choice for the millions of Veterans who prefer to use the VHA direct care system for all or part of their healthcare needs.”
https://prospect.org/health/2024-04-11-privatization-warning-veterans-affairs/
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