A bill introduced by U.S. House Committee on Veterans' Affairs Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., last week promises to make private healthcare more accessible to veterans.
The Complete the Mission Act expands on a similar measure signed into law in 2018 by President Trump.
The GOP's renewed interest in this issue is encouraging.
For decades, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has overseen a government-run health system saddling veterans with long waits for subpar care.
Former servicemembers deserve better.
The Veterans Health Administration comprises some 172 medical centers and well over one-thousand outpatient facilities in the United States
It's certainly worthwhile for taxpayers to subsidize healthcare for veterans --- especially given the sacrifice they've made for our country.
But confining veterans to treatment delivered by government-owned and -operated hospitals and treatment centers is misguided.
The VHA's track record proves as much.
The most glaring example dates to 2014, when a Phoenix VA hospital was caught falsifying records to conceal long wait times. Those delays --- which averaged 115 days for an appointment with a primary care doctor --- resulted in the deaths of at least 40 veterans and sparked a public outcry.
The episode brought to light a tragic feature of socialized medicine.
When the government is in charge of financing and operating a health system, long waits, rationing, and low-quality care follow.
It also pointed the way to a commonsense solution -- allowing veterans to seek treatment in the private sector. This is precisely what the 2018 Mission Act that President Trump signed accomplished.
The measure offered veterans who lacked a nearby VA medical facility, or who needed care which the VA couldn't provide, the option of getting treated by a provider in their community.
It extended the same option to patients who had waited more than 20 days for primary care treatment within the VA system.
According to the latest report from the VA, this new approach seems to be working. Wait times for primary care have dropped by 11% in the last year alone.
Delays for mental health care dropped by 7%. And this occurred despite a massive increase in VA enrollment of more than 400,000.
It's hard to imagine this kind of progress occurring under the old, government-run VA system.
The Complete the Mission Act would simply build on this success.
It would remove some of the bureaucratic barriers preventing veterans from accessing private care by preventing the VA from considering telehealth when determining a patient's eligibility.
And it would launch a pilot program enabling veterans to sign-up for private, outpatient substance abuse and mental health care without the need for a VA referral.
Bringing greater choice and competition into the VA certainly counts as progress. But it won't change the fact that the system remains plagued by the same sort of waste and inefficiency endemic to government-run healthcare.
For example, Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Montana, the Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, reported in September that the VA wastes $1.5 billion a year on improper payments to healthcare providers.
This kind of waste and ineptitude raises an obvious question.
Why does the government continue to fund an inadequate and expensive healthcare system for veterans when it could simply subsidize care for these Americans in the private sector?
That Republicans in Congress continue to raise this issue bodes well for the health of America's veterans.
Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and the Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is "False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All," (Encounter Books 2020). Follow her on Twitter @sallypipes. Read Sally Pipes' Reports — More Here.
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