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BOB FILNER JOINS PARADE TO PRIVATIZE VA HEALTHCARE --

House Vets' Chair echoes Steve Buyer and Larry Craig.

Calls for "VA card" that can be used at private providers.

Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), House Vets' Chair

Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, has joined a growing list of those pushing to privatize VA healthcare.

Filner has called for a "VA card" that can be used at private healthcare providers.  (see article below)

This concept has been pushed by Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN), Ranking Member on the House Vets' Committee and Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), Member of the Senate Vets' Committee.

Neither Buyer or Craig are known as friends of veterans.  Has Filner joined that list?

What is Filner thinking?  He isn't!

For every veteran that leaves to VA system, that system becomes smaller and weaker.  When small enough, it will cease to exist.

Filner's job is to help properly fund the VA so it can care for the needs of all veterans, not to help them go anywhere they want for care.

Filner has been known to engage his mouth before he engages his brain...so, maybe he'll rethink this.  I certainly hope so.

For more on privatizing the VA, use the VA Watchdog search engine...click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=privatize+privatizing&op=or

Story here...  http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Vetera
ns+ask+for+more+care&articleId=4f1b751d-1947-42bf-ae87-5a441d2c21f1

Story below:

-------------------------

Veterans ask for more care

By JOHN WHITSON
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff

MANCHESTER – Veterans Administration Medical Center may never again operate as a full-service hospital, but New Hampshire veterans should still have access to a full array of medical services without leaving the state, members of Congress agreed yesterday.

Rep. Robert Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, told a group of veterans at the Puritan Backroom conference center that an alternative solution -- such as creating a V.A.-recognized health care card for use at civilian hospitals -- is the quickest way to avoid trips to Boston for routine care.

Even that, he acknowledged, will not be easy to achieve.

"It's really a bureaucratic turf issue. The V.A. will fight it," said Filner, who toured the V.A. Medical Center in Manchester with Reps. Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter, both D-N.H.

Filner said he will push to get such a system approved, and that New Hampshire could serve as a model for the rest of the country.

"You'd love to have (the medical center) return to full service," said John Rubery, state Veterans of Foreign War senior vice commander, "but a card would go a long way toward solving the problem."

The problem, veterans and politicians agree, is New Hampshire's status as the nation's only state without a full-service veterans hospital.

"We're trying to look at why," Shea-Porter told the group.

A steady erosion of services that began in the early 1990s has resulted in elderly and disabled veterans traveling to Boston and White River Junction, Vt., for much of their health care.

Rubery, 60, of Amherst, is a disabled Vietnam War veteran. He's an amputee with diabetes, hearing loss and post-traumatic stress disorder. All he gets in Manchester, he said, is limited dental and mental health care.

"It is a shame," he said. "I remember when they had intensive care, when they had surgical procedures."

Roger Desjardins, director of the state Veterans Cemetery in Boscawen, told the congressmen he was bussed to Boston several years ago for a 10-minute hearing test alongside a veteran fighting cancer.

No one greeted the man when the bus pulled in, said Desjardins, and it took more than eight hours for a doctor to see him.

"Unfortunately, we buried him two months later," he said.

New Hampshire counts 130,000, or 10 percent, of its residents as veterans, and the number is expected to climb as veterans return from Afghanistan and Iraq.

"We need more veterans centers and more services in Manchester," said Holdes. "We don't need it tomorrow. We need it yesterday."

Filner said his primary goals are to update the G.I. Bill, eliminate a national disability claims backlog he called "disgraceful," and make V.A. funding more predictable. He said federal spending for veterans' health care was hiked 30 percent this year, but that means oversight also has to increase.

"Our job now is to make sure the V.A. does the right thing," he said.

Filner did not shut the door on restoring services at the V.A. Medical Center in Manchester.

"I would hope that over the long term, we might get there, he said.

Shea-Porter said both approaches would help achieve her overriding goal: "Fair and equal treatment for New Hampshire veterans," she said.

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posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org

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