A few days ago Nicole Fortune alerted us to a new problem courtesy of the Veteran’s Administration.
I learned today that Veteran’s Choice Program, a program that permits Veterans to seek civilian medical and dental care at the expense of the Department of Veteran Affairs has failed to pay these bills for so long that the Veteran patient is being turned over to collection agencies by the civilian facilities that signed contracts agreeing to seek payment from VA.
In true more government is more-better fashion, rather than just address the reimbursement problem or advocating for Vets with their own vendors the VA created another taxpayer-funded service to help Vets who were getting harassed by creditors who should have been going after the VA and not the Vets.
I have also learned that this is such a prevalent problem that tax dollars have now gone to pay for the Veteran’s Community Program (1-877-881-7618), which is designed to help Veteran’s clear their wrongly applied adverse credit rating and to help the Veteran’s Choice Program pay off the monies due to these collection agencies.
Nicole reached out to the VA in Manchester about this, and here is their response.
Manchester VA acknowledges the difficulties experienced by Veterans using the Choice Program. In response to this, Manchester VA established an Office of Community Care (OCC).
The OCC team stands ready to support Veterans and can be reached at:
For general information, please contact our Veteran Experience Officer at (603) 624-4366 ext. 2820 or ext. 5960. Email Inquiries: VAMCMANCOMMUNITYCARE@va.gov
For billing inquiries 857-364-6171 If you have experienced an adverse credit action please contact the Veteran’s
Community Program at 1-877-881-7618 (please note: callers may experience delays as this line is experiencing a high volume of calls at this time)”
So, when the VA (the government) doesn’t pay your bill, and you have problems contacting the VA (the government) about the problems they (the government) created by not paying your bill, you can contact the VA (the government) for ‘help’ but you might experience delays.
Talk about an indictment against more government as the solution to anything.
You could, of course, call your Congressperson. We have members of the House from New Hampshire who sit on committees with VA oversight.
But you might experience delays.
For faster service, there is an election in a few weeks. Replace them with their Republican challengers. Two gentleman who actually care about our Veterans, not to mention your jobs, your economic recovery, low taxes, more local control, Rule of Law, Free speech, and the idea that America should lead not follow.