The VA's real priority....
VA Gets the Picture -- No Shortfall Here
By Al Kamen
Monday, June 27, 2005; Page A13
Turns out that $1 billion shortfall for health care funding for our nation's veterans -- disclosed last week at a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing -- is only one of many important and vexing dilemmas facing top officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Take, for example, this discussion of a major problem during the weekly conference call a few weeks ago among senior officials at the Veterans Health Administration, which is the medical part of the VA.
"As you know," Deputy Undersecretary Laura Miller said on the May 27 call, "many of our facilities, medical centers, CBOCs" -- that's community-based outpatient clinics; there are about 850 of them in the country, many in rural areas and some open only one to two days a month -- "and [other] offices have a picture of Secretary [ Jim ] Nicholson prominently displayed.
"Unfortunately, however," Miller continued, "there are many facilities that currently do not have the picture displayed. I am aware that the mailings of the pictures occurred on April 22, 2005." So that's more than five full weeks.
"Dr. Perlin" -- that's Jonathan B. Perlin , undersecretary for health, who revealed the $1 billion shortfall after being grilled by committee Chairman Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) -- "and I cannot stress the importance of this enough," she said. "We are asking that you give this your highest priority. We will continue to ask for daily updates on the status until we are assured that all of our facilities have a current picture displayed."
In defense of local VA officials, it turns out that Miller was wrong: Not all the photos went out on April 22. And we hear some officials disagreed that the photos should be their "highest priority."...
washingtonpost.com
With $1B short for Veteran's health care, it seems like it would be fitting for veterans waiting for health care to be responsible for putting up Sec. Nicholson's picture.
If anyone knows someone at Ft. Bragg...please pass this on. |
