{"id":2892,"date":"2016-05-16T08:27:52","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T12:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/?p=2892"},"modified":"2016-05-16T08:27:52","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T12:27:52","slug":"fix-for-va-health-snarls-veterans-and-doctors-in-new-bureaucracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/?p=2892","title":{"rendered":"Fix For VA Health Snarls Veterans And Doctors In New Bureaucracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(By Quil Lawrence, NPR News, Eric Whitney, Montana Public Radio and Michael Tomsie, WFAE for Kaiser Health News)<\/p>\n<p>Veterans are <em>still<\/em> waiting to see a doctor. Two years ago, vets were waiting a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/health-shots\/2014\/06\/04\/318827245\/va-health-cares-chronic-ailments-long-waits-and-red-tape\">long<\/a> time for care at Veterans Affairs clinics. At one facility in Phoenix, for example, veterans waited on average 115 days for an appointment. Adding insult to injury, some VA schedulers were told to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/thetwo-way\/2014\/06\/09\/320343022\/audit-finds-13-percent-of-va-schedulers-told-to-falsify-data\" target=\"_blank\">falsify data<\/a> to make it looks like the waits weren\u2019t that bad. The whole scandal ended up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/thetwo-way\/2014\/05\/30\/317350806\/calling-va-problems-indefensible-shinseki-will-fire-phoenix-leaders\" target=\"_blank\">forcing<\/a> the resignation of the VA secretary at the time, Eric Shinseki.<\/p>\n<p>Congress and the VA came up with a fix: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2014\/06\/06\/319380336\/senators-reach-deal-to-pay-for-veterans-care-outside-va-system\" target=\"_blank\">Veterans Choice<\/a>, a $10 billion program. Veterans received a card that was supposed to allow them to see a non-VA doctor if they were either more than 40 miles away from a VA facility or they were going to have to wait longer than 30 days for a VA provider to see them. <a href=\"http:\/\/khn.org\/news\/fix-for-va-health-snarls-veterans-and-doctors-in-new-bureaucracy\/?utm_campaign=KHN%3A+First+Edition&amp;utm_source=hs_email&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_content=29601933&amp;_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8oJSpLuOtq2KT0Ac0UoY5yl38ck35RqIZ5EAeSni6PwD_K1ZnuEE8cA-xAtqP6k82--IPFON4dgvXmzylcgBqr72qABQ&amp;_hsmi=29601933\" target=\"_blank\">Read article here&#8230;&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"font: 15px\/1.6 'Open Sans', serif; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; outline: 0px; border: 0px currentColor; color: #444444; text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; word-spacing: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; widows: 1; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: inherit; background-color: #ffffff; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;\">Kaiser Health News\u00a0is\u00a0a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font: 15px\/1.6 'Open Sans', serif; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; outline: 0px; border: 0px currentColor; color: #444444; text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; word-spacing: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; widows: 1; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: inherit; background-color: #ffffff; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/khn-logo1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-899 \" src=\"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/khn-logo1-300x156.png\" alt=\"khn-logo1\" width=\"92\" height=\"48\" srcset=\"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/khn-logo1-300x156.png 300w, https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/khn-logo1-1024x533.png 1024w, https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/khn-logo1-390x205.png 390w, https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/khn-logo1.png 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 92px) 100vw, 92px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<pre><strong>Notice<\/strong>: The link provided above connects readers to the full content of the posted article. The URL (internet address) for this link is valid on the posted date; medicarereport.org cannot guarantee the duration of the link\u2019s validity. Also, the opinions expressed in these postings are the viewpoints of the original source and are not explicitly endorsed by AMAC, Inc.; the AMAC Foundation, Inc.; or medicarereport.org.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(By Quil Lawrence, NPR News, Eric Whitney, Montana Public Radio and Michael Tomsie, WFAE for Kaiser Health News) Veterans are<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-benefits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2892"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2893,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2892\/revisions\/2893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}