Trump’s VA Just Announced Plans To Shut Down 1,100 VA Care Facilities

[Amused]

So much for helping vets...

If you're a veteran like me and you voted for Trump, you need to see this. VAMC's are 99% Medical personnel and veteran staffed.... So he's sabotaging veteran specific care and forcing veterans into unemployment.

http://www.disabledveterans.org/201...eterans-affairs-may-close-1100-va-facilities/

BREAKING: Secretary Of Veterans Affairs May Close Over 1,100 VA Facilities
By
Benjamin Krause
-
May 3, 2017

The Secretary of Veteran Affairs David Shulkin, MD, is seeking to close possibly more than 1,100 VA facilities nationwide in push to privatize VA medical care.

During a Congressional hearing today, Shulkin said he sought to close 430 vacant and 735 underutilized buildings to save the taxpayers $25 million per year. He told Congress VA may use the same process as the Pentagon for base closures, called Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC).

“Whether BRAC is a model that we should take a look, we’re beginning that discussion with members of Congress,” Shulkin told a House appropriations subcommittee. “We want to stop supporting our use of maintenance of buildings we don’t need, and we want to reinvest that in buildings we know have capital needs.”

The move comes on the heels of a recent announcement that President Donald Trump decided to dramatically reduce the fat from the federal government’s budget including removal of duplicative or useless service areas. While VA did receive a budget increase, the agency has decided to restrict hiring including not filling roughly 4,000 vacant positions.

While Congress welcomed the announcement, at least on Republican gave some advice to Shulkin about using the term BRAC to describe what VA is planning.

“Don’t ever use the term BRAC because it brings up a lot of bad memories,” Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb) cautioned. “You automatically set yourself up for a lot of controversy.”

Base reduction through the BRAC model received a lot of negative press over the years. Communities that had grown dependent on military spending in their area vis a vis operations on a military base and spending from local military members is a known local stimulus, and closure of a base sometimes resulted in shutting down of entire towns as a result.

Some readers may recall another recent announcement that Shulkin did not intend to privatize VA healthcare while out of the other side of his mouth announcing that he planned to stop the agency from providing eye and hearing care.

Last week, Shulkin allegedly told a room full of VA healthcare facility directors that he planned to stop providing optometry or audiology services since there is a “LensCrafters on every corner.”

The move is aimed at reducing expenditures at local facilities to then allow those same facilities to use the extra funds to fix problems at the same facility. I will write more of this behind the scenes discussion later.

 

[Indus]

Trump wants this, so it must be so good, beautiful and win!

 

[dank69]

I think this is great and exactly what America needs. I hear the military are generally big time Democrats and probably a lot of them voted for Hillary. At least they'll get to keep their guns though.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Veteran's care should be privatized so they can get the care they need in a timely manner.

 

[HomerJS]

Veteran's care should be privatized so they can get the care they need in a timely manner.

In the mean time let's close the VA care facilities before that happens. From what I've read people rate their care very high once they get it.

 

[KMFJD]

is anyone actually surprised?

 

[Amused]

Veteran's care should be privatized so they can get the care they need in a timely manner.

It's funny (actually not), but the only people I ever hear say this are not veterans, and have no idea how unique veteran care is.

I highly suggest researching the subject using actual veterans, especially those with PTSD and battle injuries to figure this out before having an opinion drawn from ideological ignorance.

 

[Jaskalas]

Looks like the Vets got... Trumped.

 

[dank69]

Veteran's care should be privatized so they can get the care they need in a timely manner.

Yeah there are probably no downsides to that:

Key Findings. That study concluded that delivering VHA’s services through private-sector providers would have cost more overall at the six medical centers studied and at the national level, although the results varied depending on the types of care involved. For the six centers, the study estimated the following differences:

 The full range of services that VHA provided in 1999 would have cost about 21 percent more if those services had been delivered through the private sector at Medicare’s payment rates.
 Inpatient care (excluding costs for nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities) would have cost about 16 percent more if it had been purchased at Medicare’s rates.
 The outpatient care provided by VHA would have cost about 11 percent more if it had been provided at Medicare’s prices.
 Prescription drugs would have cost about 70 percent more using a combination of Medicaid’s and Medicare’s payment methods. That difference alone accounted for almost half of the net difference in overall costs.

Using Medicare’s payment rates as the primary basis for comparison had important effects on those results. In particular, Medicare’s payment rates for doctors and hospitals are generally much lower than those of commercial insurance plans—an average of about 20 percent lower for physicians’ services and about 30 percent lower for hospital services, according to recent estimates. Consequently, the difference between VHA’s costs and private-sector costs would have been much larger if the comparison had been made using those commercial payment rates.

Highly partisan source: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/f...13-2014/reports/49763-VA_Healthcare_Costs.pdf

 

[Sunburn74]

Veteran's care should be privatized so they can get the care they need in a timely manner.

You have no idea WTF you are talking about. VA care is better than pretty much any private insurance out there. It is absolutely incredible what it offers and there is a reason people fight tooth and nail to keep their VA benefits in situations where they may lose them. Again under the VA healthcare system, any medication no matter how expensive is 10 dollars per month for the patient. Be it a drug that costs 50 dollars for a year of 300,000 thousand per year, the patient sees the same price. No private plan offers this sort of consumer protection and these sorts of protections extend way beyond just medication prices. Filing for bankruptcy due to a health care a issue that is treated by the VA is unheard of. Filing for bankruptcy for a health issue treated by a private plan is amazingly common.

On a separate note, there are a lot of VA facilities that are in the middle of nowhere and don't have a well defined population. Closing some of these and consolidating advanced VA care is a good move I would say. However if you're going to be a veteran you can't live in the middle of nowhere and expect to have facilities right next to you. Obviously it's a balance.

 

[interchange]

The VA does have community health centers that are vacant or unoccupied. I think there is a legitimate question in whether maintaining these centers is the best use of resources. Shunting VA care to the community in large centers has been evaluated by the CBO per @dank69, but we can't automatically generalize this to the facilities in question.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

It's funny (actually not), but the only people I ever hear say this are not veterans, and have no idea how unique veteran care is.

I highly suggest researching the subject using actual veterans, especially those with PTSD and battle injuries to figure this out before having an opinion drawn from ideological ignorance.

I am a Navy veteran of 12 years, luckily I have good health insurance through my employer. I also currently make too much to qualify for VA care.

 

[fskimospy]

Anyone who says that VA care should be privatized has either spent no time researching this issue or better be prepared to spend a LOT more money on it. If that's the case, then they better not be complaining about government waste in other areas.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Anyone who says that VA care should be privatized has either spent no time researching this issue or better be prepared to spend a LOT more money on it. If that's the case, then they better not be complaining about government waste in other areas.

Yeah, it far better for veterans to die waiting for care than actually seeing them in a timely manner.

PS I know two veterans who died waiting for care............one was my uncle.

 

[fskimospy]

Yeah, it far better for veterans to die waiting for care than actually seeing them in a timely manner.

PS I know two veterans who died waiting for care............one was my uncle.

This is a terrible straw man.

How many more people do you think will die waiting for care if the VA can care for 20% fewer people on its budget? My guess? A lot.

 

[glenn1]

Yeah, it far better for veterans to die waiting for care than actually seeing them in a timely manner.

PS I know two veterans who died waiting for care............one was my uncle.

So you object to closing facilities that are vacant (430 of them per the article)? To what end? As for the "735 underutilized" facilities that might be either a plus, minus, or neutral for the effected vets - it does no good to have a facility that remains open but doesn't offer the services you need and you wind up having to go somewhere else anyway.

 

[theeedude]

Awesome, these freeloaders can take a drive if they need care.

 

[boomerang]

The OP needs to read his own article. And the thread title is BS that is proven false only a few sentences into the quoted article. But I already know it won't be changed.

 

[fskimospy]

The OP needs to read his own article. And the thread title is BS that is proven false only a few sentences into the quoted article. But I already know it won't be changed.

Nope, thread title is accurate and he quoted the entire article in his post.

It never ceases to amaze me how totally inept you are at even basic reading comprehension.

 

[Fern]

Nope, thread title is accurate and he quoted the entire article in his post.

It never ceases to amaze me how totally inept you are at even basic reading comprehension.

Really?

Please explain how one goes about "shutting down" a "vacant building".

Fern

 

[alien42]

"Shulkin said he sought to close 430 vacant and 735 underutilized buildings to save the taxpayers $25 million per year."

i'll play the middle ground here, why are there 430 vacant VA buildings that we are paying for and what exactly does underutilized mean?

 

[MomentsofSanity]

"Shulkin said he sought to close 430 vacant and 735 underutilized buildings to save the taxpayers $25 million per year."

i'll play the middle ground here, why are there 430 vacant VA buildings that we are paying for and what exactly does underutilized mean?

My thoughts too. At a cost of only $25 million annually they can't be contributing much at all to the system I wouldn't think for that many facilities.

 

[dank69]

Really?

Please explain how one goes about "shutting down" a "vacant building".

Fern

Off the top of my head you could shut off power and other utilities. I'm sure as an accountant you can think of financial book keeping items that could be changed, particularly if they unload the assets.

 

[Fern]

Off the top of my head you could shut off power and other utilities. I'm sure as an accountant you can think of financial book keeping items that could be changed, particularly if they unload the assets.

"Shutting down" is normally understood to mean terminating services to your client/customer population.

Fern

 

[fskimospy]

"Shutting down" is normally understood to mean terminating services to your client/customer population.

Fern

Are you saying the article misquoted the VA secretary? He pretty clearly stated they were looking into using the Base Realignment and Closure framework for VA facilities. If you have questions about how you close something that you say is vacant I would direct your questions to him. Until he gets back to us though, let's all be rational enough to admit that boomerang is full of shit yet again.