Newswire/ -- President Bush's VA budget request for 2007 has been hailed for adding nearly $3 billion in real appropriations for veterans health care, compared to 2006.
However, he added, it's a budget request built on charging new annual enrollment fees for VA care, nearly doubling drug co- payments and driving 1.2 million veterans out of the system created specifically for them.
Bock added that the budget request still relies on $1.1 billion in cost-saving "efficiencies" -- the subject of a Government Accountability Office report released last week that criticized past VA health-care projections from the president's Office of Management and Budget -- and also how realistic it is for the president to expect dramatic improvements in VA's ability to collect payments from insurance companies, especially since VA is prohibited by Congress to bill Medicare.
Overall, Bock said the 2007 budget request from the White House appears to be an improvement over previous years when VA health care suffered due to inaccurate patient-demand projections, faulty assumptions, budgets offset by nebulous "management efficiencies" and unattainable third-party collections.
"The under-estimated number of VA patients from the ongoing war contributed mightily to the $1.5 billion budget shortfall for VA health care in 2005," Bock said.
The commander reiterated that he cannot accept a budget that deliberately aims to send more than one million veterans out of the VA system in search of health care elsewhere.
Those groups are forced in this budget request to pay new $250 enrollment fees and nearly double in pharmaceutical co-payments.
Bock said the 2.7 million-member American Legion stands firm in its position that the only way VA health care can avoid annual shortages and broken promises is by changing the funding formula.
Even House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Steve Buyer, R- Ind., would consider the collection of nearly $3 billion from insurance companies an ambitious goal.
"I call on Chairman Buyer in this week's hearings to give VA health care a funding formula that cuts through the fog and assures veterans the health-care system they deserve."
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