Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, MD, testified before the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs Tuesday that their proposal to replace the Veterans Choice Program was too restrictive, instead offering a replacement plan of his own, according to Stars and Stripes.
The Veterans Choice Program was established in 2014 and allows veterans to receive care at private providers if they live more than 40 miles from a VA facility or would have longer than a 30-day wait for care. However, the expensive program has proven difficult to fund, and the House's proposal would allow veterans to receive care at private providers only if the VA could not fulfill a paitent's care needs. The plan would establish a network of private providers in each VA region.
Dr. Shulkin's Veterans Coordinated Access and Rewarding Experiences plan would allow veterans to see private providers if the VA cannot offer the care required or cannot provide the care in a clinically-acceptable time period. If Dr. Shulkin deems a VA facility does not meet quality standards, veterans in that region would also be able to seek private care. The VA would enter into Veterans Care Agreements with private providers to ensure reimbursement rates similar to those paid by Medicare.
"What we're signaling in this is to start doing what we should've been doing more, which is giving the veteran more choice in the say of their care," Dr. Shulkin said, according to Stars and Stripes. "We want the provider and the patient making the best decision for the patient."
The CARE proposal would also give Dr. Shulkin more hiring authority to try and fill the VA's 34,000 vacant positions.
Neither the CARE proposal nor the House plan included funding estimates. The VA was awarded $2.1 billion in emergency funding for the Choice program in August, but Dr. Shulkin says that money will run out by the end of the year. He is seeking an additional $4 billion to fund the program until Sept. 30, 2018, when he hopes a new plan will be phased in.