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Florida lawmaker wants VA hospital
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By Bill Walsh
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New Orleans Times-Picayune, March 20th, 2007
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Florida lawmaker wants VA hospital
He urges panel to kill plan for N.O. facility
With disputes in Louisiana complicating plans for a new Veterans Affairs hospital in New Orleans, a Florida congressman made a pitch for instead putting a new facility in his district.
Rep. Jeff Miller, a Republican who represents the westernmost tip of Florida's panhandle, has urged the VA and House Veterans Affairs Committee to scrap a planned $600 million hospital to replace the one in downtown New Orleans that was damaged in Hurricane Katrina.
The VA has proposed a joint facility with Louisiana State University, whose flagship Charity Hospital also was severely damaged in Katrina's flooding. But the proposal has been caught in the broader question of how to rebuild the health-care system in one of the poorest state's in the nation where one in five people lack health insurance.
'A grave concern'
When the Louisiana Legislature balked last month at allocating $300 million for the LSU-run part of the complex, Miller wrote to the Veterans' Affairs Committee condemning the project and proposing a new VA hospital at Eglin Air Force base in Okaloosa County, which he said had "one of the fastest-growing veterans' populations in a district that already has the highest veterans' population."
"Many share with me a grave concern about the fiscal irresponsibility of (the New Orleans) project as well as the haste with which it was conceived," Miller wrote in a Feb. 22 letter. "The New Orleans area had a declining veterans' population prior to Katrina. Why then should a VA medical center of unprecedented size and cost be placed right in that same area when elsewhere there is a more pressing need?"
His letter to Reps. Bob Filner, D-Calif., and Steve Buyer, R-Ind., the chairman and ranking member of the committee came less than a week after the Louisiana Legislature's vote. Miller also urged VA Secretary Jim Nicholson to spike the New Orleans project, a spokesman said.
Project raises questions
Miller's action triggered a swift denunciation from Louisiana lawmakers.
"I'm appalled that Mr. Miller would seek to use the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina to profit his own constituents," Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, said. "Veterans in southeast Louisiana need an accessible VA hospital just as much now as they did pre-Katrina, and to rob them of that would be adding yet another burden to people who have already endured plenty of hardship."
Louisiana political leaders generally endorse the VA/LSU collaborative. But some have questioned the size of the Charity replacement and whether it would perpetuate a two-tiered health-care system in which poor, uninsured people seek primary health care at state-run emergency rooms.
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., has taken a lead role in urging a reconfiguring of the state's health-care system and he applauded the decision by the Legislature to delay financing for the hospital until it can be determined how it would fit into a larger overhaul. Rep. Richard Baker, R-Baton Rouge, has voiced his own concerns about the design, location and slow timetable for construction.
But both said they favor a VA hospital in southeast Louisiana and the Legislature did approve $74 million to buy property for the joint project. Another vote on the $300 million could come as early as this week. The nearest VA hospital to downtown New Orleans is Biloxi, Miss., about 75 miles away. Miller said the closest VA hospitals to his Florida district are in Alabama and Mississippi and are between two and three hours away.
Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, called the proposed New Orleans complex "a key part of the health-care recovery plan for Southeast Louisiana."
Vitter said that on several occasions he urged Nicholson and the VA "to maintain its commitment to LSU and moving forward in the context of (health-care) redesign." Baker went straight to his Republican House colleague. In a letter Friday to Miller, Baker said his reservations weren't an invitation to move the VA hospital two states and three hours east.
"I understand your concerns with the project and to a large degree share some of those concerns," Baker wrote to Miller. "However, I need to make clear that while concerns about the collaborative do exist, I am nonetheless determined to maintain a VA Hospital presence in Southeast Louisiana."
A spokesman for Miller said he wasn't trying to steer the Louisiana hospital to Florida, but rather point out the problems with one plan while at the same time express the needs of his own constituents.
"He sees this as two separate issues," said Miller spokesman Dan McFaul.
'N.O. is a bad idea'
Miller's isn't the only voice in Congress questioning the VA/LSU plan. McFaul said that "a couple dozen" members of the conservative Republican Study Committee in the House have raised concerns that New Orleans would flood in another storm and the joint venture was seen by LSU merely as a way of "propping up" a school to train doctors.
"New Orleans is a bad idea," McFaul said. "The (veterans) population isn't there and you are putting it in a soup bowl. And are we just propping up a medical school?"
Controversy over Louisiana health-care redesign also has prompted the VA to reassess. The agency confirmed last week that it will consider other sites outside downtown New Orleans to erect a new hospital.
But Dr. Robert Lynch, a director at the agency, told a House subcommittee last week that the VA "remains excited" about the collaborative with LSU and "we support all of the principles behind it."
The VA did not respond for comment Monday. Lynch said in an interview last week that the VA is committed to building its hospital in Southeast Louisiana.
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