Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Veterans Choice Bill Easily Clears Senate
The Associated Press: Senate OKs Bills To Address VA Budget Crisis, Claims Backlog
The Senate has approved a pair of bills taking aim at urgent problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs, clearing a $3.9 billion emergency spending package to fix a looming budget crisis and adopting new measures to pare down a rapidly growing backlog of veterans' disability claims. Both bills passed Tuesday by unanimous vote. (Yen, 8/1)
CQ Roll Call: Senate Clears Veterans ' Health Bill For Trump's Signature
Senators cleared a $2.1 billion stopgap bill for President Donald Trump on Tuesday night that will keep a private medical care program for veterans running temporarily while authorizers work on a broader overhaul. The Veterans Choice Program was established in 2014 (PL 113-146) following a wait-time scandal in Phoenix that rocked the Department of Veterans Affairs and revealed a nationwide problem. Whistleblowers said that patients had died while waiting for care managed by VA employees who kept unofficial wait lists and were altering wait-time data in a way that obscured a massive appointment backlog. (Mejdrich, 8/1)
In other veterans' health care news —
The Wall Street Journal: Veterans Using Private Doctors At Greater Risk For Opioid Abuse
Veterans using a Department of Veterans Affairs program to seek care from doctors in the private sector instead of the VA face a greater danger of becoming entangled in the country’s opioid epidemic, the VA said Tuesday. Findings from the VA’s Office of Inspector General show that programs allowing veterans to get care from private doctors when appointments aren’t available in the VA system leave veterans vulnerable to overprescription of powerful opioids because of gaps in the process used by the VA to keep track of prescriptions. (Kesling, 8/1)
Denver Post: Cory Gardner, Michael Bennet Want Answers About VA Waiting Times In Denver
U.S. senators Cory Gardner and Michael Bennet want to know what the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is doing to solve the agency’s recurring problems in Colorado with scheduling speedy medical appointments, according to letters they sent Tuesday. Separate one-page letters from the Colorado Republican and Democrat to VA Sec. David Shulkin come five days after The Denver Post reported that waiting times in the Denver-based Eastern Colorado Health Care System are among the worst nationally, and are three times worse than in Phoenix, where the wait-list scandal erupted three years ago. (Migoya, 8/1)
