Beyond Gotcha: A 21st Century Veterans Services System
Gingrich Productions To receive Newt’s weekly newsletters, click here. The usual Washington dance around a failed bureaucracy has begun. The media reports enough scandals and failures that hearings have to be held. The head of the department, in this case Secretary Shinseki, after avoiding the cameras as long as possible, appears at the hearing to announce his anger at the revelations. “Any allegation, any adverse incident like this makes me mad as hell,” he said. The White House promptly defends its appointee. Appearing on CNN’s The Lead yesterday, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough told Jake Tapper that Shinseki “holds himself accountable to his men and women.” This stonewalling just increased public and media frustration at the apparent lack of accountability. ABC’s Jon Karl reminded White House Press Secretary Jay Carney today that “veterans have actually died.” Tapper demanded of McDonough, “How many dead veterans do you need?” They weren’t just asking rhetorical questions. The VA has already admitted that 23 veterans have died across the country from bureaucratic problems and the news media has alleged substantially more deaths than the VA has admitted. Meanwhile the prison guards of the old order, led by Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, rally to oppose change by asserting that satisfaction with Veterans Administration services is actually very high. The White House, having supported Shinseki (who today “accepted the resignation” of an under secretary responsible for health), decided to cover its bets by appointing a White House Deputy Chief of Staff to review the VA. President Obama announced he wanted the system scrutinized despite his Chief of Staff having just vigorously defended the Secretary. Shinseki promptly expressed his support for the White House intervention. Next, in an effort to slow everything down, Shinseki said the VA’s Inspector General had asked him not to share details with the Congress until his investigations were complete which could take months or even longer. All of this is a familiar gotcha dance with some members of Congress allied with a media which in this case, at least, is demanding more information, and other members allied with the bureaucracy trying to slow everything down until the media and the public forget the issue and move on to something else. What our veterans need is something profoundly different from Congress. The real question has to be, ” What is the best system for veteran services that we can provide in the 21st century?” If we simply start with the capacity of the smartphone we can begin to imagine a dramatically more powerful, more effective and more convenient Veterans Services System. Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has suggested very insightfully that the 21st century will have four dominant characteristics: our lives will increasingly be digital, mobile, virtual and personal. If you look at your own smart phone you can see what she is talking about. Congressman Mike Burgess, for instance, has eight different medical apps on his smart phone (as he is also a doctor). After talking with him, I added an EKG attachment to my iPhone just to see how if it would work. It performed perfectly, analyzed the data, and emailed the results to my doctor. The whole attachment cost less than $100. (Having the test performed once at a doctor’s office typically costs more.) These capabilities will only get more advanced and will rapidly fall in price. A system the size of the VA could deploy them to serve hundreds of thousands of veterans at much lower cost. In addition to using technology to create a new system for veterans, we could also make services drastically better by allowing veterans to be seen at civilian health facilities. Tricare dependents have the option to see civilian physicians in the Tricare Network when they are not close to military facilities or there are no available appointments. The VA could rapidly eliminate its backlog if it offered veterans the same opportunity if they couldn’t book an appointment at the VA within 14 days. We can’t allow our vets to be prisoners of an incompetent bureaucracy. We need to replace the failed system with a modern Veterans Services System that is built around defending the health of our veterans, not the health of the bureaucracy. While Congress is focused on finding the truth about what was happening to our veterans, many of us are also focused on developing this totally new approach to VA to ensure these problems never happen again. There are some immediate reforms that Congress should enact. In particular, House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller has introduced the 2014 VA Management Accountability Act that will make it easier to fire people for poor performance. “VA’s widespread and systemic lack of accountability is exacerbating all of its most pressing problems,” he said, “including the department’s stubborn disability benefits backlog and a mounting toll of at least 31 recent preventable veteran deaths at VA medical centers across the country.” Senator Marco Rubio has offered a companion bill that would also help eliminate red tape “to give the VA secretary authorities similar to those members of Congress have to fire employees from their staffs.” Congressman Dan Benishek’s Demanding Accountability for Veterans Act would put a system in place to ensure VA administrators respond appropriately to IG reports. Senator John Thune has proposed legislation that would require the VA’s Inspector General Office to report wait times directly to Congress. These bills are the beginning of getting the VA bureaucracy under control. Now it is time to think through the replacement. Copyright © 2013 Gingrich Productions. All rights reserved. http://www.gingrichproductions.com/2014/05/beyond-gotcha-a-21st-century-veterans-services-system |