Health Care Funding

More than 5.5 million veterans receive health care services from the veterans health care system, with thousands more returning veterans enrolling every month. While Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care has become a national model for quality and safety, problems remain in providing timely access to veterans.

Moreover, rising health care costs, increasing utilization and higher intensity of care – all in the midst of a tightening federal budget – threaten all the progress that VA has made in quality, safety and efficiency over the past decade. The VA health care system must be protected and sustained for the millions of veterans who depend on it now as their only health care resource and will do so for many decades.

One of the biggest obstacles has been VA’s discretionary funding process. Unlike Medicare or Medicaid, VA health care must rely on Congress and the President to pass a new law each year that provides VA hospitals and clinics with funding to treat veterans. However, as a result of insufficient, late and unpredictable budgets, VA has been unable to manage and plan the delivery of care as effectively as it needs to do.

Inadequate budget submissions from Presidents of both parties, annual Continuing Resolutions in lieu of approved appropriations bills, late arriving final appropriations, offsets and across-the-board cuts, supplemental and even “emergency” appropriations late in the year—all of these have become so common that they are now seen as “normal.”

In each of the past three years, Congress has had to find and appropriate “extra” funding to fill gaps left from the current appropriations system. In one case, the President formally requested an emergency supplemental and a separate budget amendment from Congress, both within only a few days of each other.

While VA claims to have eliminated its health care waiting lists that just a few years ago officially numbered close to 300,000 veterans, there is more than ample evidence that thousands of eligible veterans continue to wait for months to get their first VA appointments. Further, there are hundreds of thousands of veterans who could have benefited from VA health care had funding shortfalls not forced VA to close them four years ago.

Beyond the lack of adequate funding, today’s budget process itself has severely hampered VA’s ability to properly manage, plan and operate the system for veterans. For 12 of the last 13 fiscal years VA funding has come through Continuing Resolutions. Lately, regular appropriations acts have been approved several months after the start of the new fiscal year.

Not knowing when or what level of funding they will receive from year to year severely impairs their ability to recruit and retain VA staff, contract for services, purchase equipment and supplies and efficiently perform planning and administrative matters that are vital to sick and disabled veterans who need VA care. Many of these veterans have no alternative to the VA – and for those injured in war, the government has an absolute obligation to provide comprehensive health care.

A young American wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan today – particularly those with severe disabilities such as limb loss, blindness or traumatic brain injury – will need to rely on the VA health care system for decades. Congress must enact a long-term funding solution that guarantees sufficient funding on a timely and predictable basis, and thus guarantee the long-term viability of the VA health care system.

We must have a dependable VA system not just today while new war veterans are in the news, but far in the future when the headlines have faded.

Stand Up for Assured Funding for VA Health Care – Contact Congress Today