WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi praised the work of a presidential task force commissioned to improve coordination between the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DoD).
"This report is a roadmap to the President's often repeated goal that the walls separating DoD and VA will come down for good," said Principi.
President Bush announced the creation of a 15-member task force on Memorial Day 2001. The task force’s goals were to identify ways to improve health care delivery to veterans and DoD beneficiaries and to strengthen the VA-DoD partnership for health care services. Among the items studied were budgeting, billing, reimbursement, procurement of supplies and services, data sharing and information technology.
"When the young men and women who are now defending our freedom in the foreign corners of the globe put aside their uniforms and assume the honored title of veteran, they have every right to expect VA to pick up their health care needs seamlessly and process benefit claims as if DoD and VA were, for all intents and purposes, one shared system," Principi said.
Coordination between VA and DoD has been a key part of Principi's agenda. Through a number of initiatives, including a joint VA-DoD executive council and sharing agreements between local VA and military medical facilities across the country, the two largest cabinet departments are already in the process of implementing 21 of the task force's 23 recommendations.
"While we have more work to do before we are done, I am committed to fulfilling the President’s vision," Principi said. "Secretary Rumsfeld and I care for the same people at different points in their lives, and neither of us can meet these needs until we transform the way we do business."
The task force also addressed funding for VA’s core medical care mission -- providing health care for veterans with military disabilities or low incomes.
Principi noted that the President’s 2004 budget request for VA includes an unprecedented $27.5 billion in discretionary funding for medical care, which fully funds health care for all core veterans and is consistent with the recommendations of the task force.
"With the support of the President, VA has received the largest increases in our history," Principi said. "The request for VA medical care, a nearly 8 percent increase over 2003, represents the largest increase in actual dollars ever requested by any President."
The presidential task force was co-chaired by Dr. Gail R. Wilensky, former head of the Health Care Financing Administration, former Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt and the late New York Congressman Gerald B.H. Solomon.
