GOP Rep. Proposes Health Care Vouchers So Vets Can Opt Out of VA Health System
BY: Larry O’Connor
May 22, 2014 1:20 pm
Rep. Andy Harris (R., Md.) is a Navy vet and a medical doctor who spent years at the VA. He has probably forgotten more about health care issues for our veterans than most congressmen will ever know. And he wants vets to have a choice so they can opt out of the government-run bureaucracy and access the private health care system.
This morning I interviewed Harris on WMAL radio in Washington, D.C., and cited my Washington Free Beacon colleague Andrew Stiles’ terrific article exposing how liberal pundits and politicians held the VA health system up as a “huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform.”
Audio at:
An Opt-out voucher would almost certainly eliminate virtually all of the backlog, and a good many complaints about the ineffective care bordering on malfeasance of medical practice, almost completely. But it would also make about half the employees at VA Health administration redundant or just eliminate any justification for their position at all.
And that is why the civil service unions are up and screaming, which stopped the consideration in the Senate of the bill calling for the Director of Veterans Benefits Administration to have some discretionary power to fire ineffective or incompetent managers, or those who actively engaged in unauthorized activity.
The Current Occupant is even more beholden to the union representatives than the Senate majority, else a simple phone call to Harry Reid would have been enough to pass this enabling legislation so the Director of the VBA could have the authority he needs. So nobody in the White Hut does the right thing.