The vote today was 93-3. Senators now must iron out differences with competing House legislation, which doesn’t include money for the Department of Veterans Affairs to hire new doctors or nurses.
“I think we’ll get it done quick,” Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican who helped craft the measure, said in an interview about negotiations with the House. “There’s a certain urgency here.”
Veterans’ health care has become a top priority for lawmakers following reports that hospitals and clinics were hiding months-long waiting lists of veterans trying to see a doctor. An internal VA audit June 9 showed more than 120,000 veterans had not received a medical appointment or were currently waiting longer than 90 days for care.
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The FBI has opened a criminal investigation into delays in medical care at veterans’ hospitals, FBI Director James Comey said today at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
“Our Phoenix office has opened a criminal investigation,” Comey said. “We’ll follow it wherever the facts take us.”
A Veterans Affairs inspector general’s report on May 28 said some VA hospitals kept phony records to hide delays in treating veterans. Richard Griffin, the department’s acting inspector general, said a review of 42 VA medical facilities found repeated instances of altered waiting lists.
1,700 Veterans
At the Phoenix facility that first focused attention on the agency, as many as 1,700 veterans were “at risk of being lost or forgotten” when that hospital left them off an official list of patients waiting to see a doctor, according to the report.
At least 18 veterans died while awaiting medical care in Phoenix, Sloan Gibson, acting Veterans Affairs secretary, has said. House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican, has said there were as many as 40 deaths.
Subsequent audits widened the scope of the VA’s failings to hospitals and clinics across the country, adding to the difficulty President Barack Obama may have in finding someone new to oversee the department and its $160 billion budget. The previous secretary, Eric Shinseki, resigned last month.
Firing Executives
The Senate bill would allow VA officials to more easily fire or demote senior executives for inadequate job performance. It would authorize leases for 26 new health-care facilities and expand the non-VA facilities where veterans could seek medical care.
The measure is sponsored by McCain and Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee. It also would broaden VA treatment of sexual assault and expand recruitment programs for medical students.
Those measures have been included in some of the dozen veterans-related bills that the House has passed in recent months.
One difference between the two chambers is about $500 million the Senate would spend on hiring doctors and nurses. The House agreed on a plan to study VA’s available resources before Congress would provide that funding.
Today’s bill is H.R. 3230.
Also read: Sick of the waiting game
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