June 6 will be the third anniversary of the bipartisan VA MISSION Act, which created the Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) process, designed to establish a commission to determine the status and needs of Department of Veterans Affairs’ infrastructure. But before the AIR Commission can even get off the ground, the Biden administration is proposing $18 billion in… Read more »
A key component of the VA MISSION Act is coming up on a deadline. Commissioners for the Asset and Infrastructure Review Commission are to be nominated by the president by the end of May. If that deadline is not met, the process for establishing the commission will be thrown off course. The AIR Commission and… Read more »
Jimmie T. Smith is a partially disabled U.S. Army veteran who is happy with the care he gets from the Veterans Affairs health care system. But, as he writes in a new op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times, as a onetime chairman of the state House Veterans and Military Affairs Subcommittee and as Florida coalitions… Read more »
This article was updated on March 25, 2022. If you’ve read or heard anything about the VA MISSION Act, you know what the law does to improve and expand veterans’ access to medical care. It created a new community care program that gives more veterans the freedom to choose medical care from providers outside the Department… Read more »
Joshua Stanwitz, a coalitions director with Concerned Veterans for America in Arizona, was just starting his journey with the VA health care system when news of the Phoenix VA wait list scandal broke seven years ago. The Arizona Republic, the state’s largest newspaper, found out that the local VA hospital had been maintaining two sets of wait lists – an official electronic list… Read more »
This weekend marks seven years since the Phoenix VA scandal came to light. In 2014, news broke revealing veterans were being kept on secret appointment wait lists at VA medical facilities in order to manipulate and hide actual wait times. In the years that followed, accountability and access reforms have improved conditions for veterans using the VA… Read more »
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year, the Department of Veterans Affairs was turned on its head. Suddenly, millions of medical appointments were canceled, both at VA facilities and in community care programs. Non-urgent care has yet to get back to normal. A year later, America’s veterans have felt the effects of COVID-19 and canceled… Read more »
