RED ALERT!!!

: Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 4:33 PM

 To every VA employee, Veterans organization,

Family members and Friend.

Use your email and fax, to get this message out, to your U.S. Representatives.

 

Keep passing this message on to everyone on your email list today and don’t stop, time is of essence !

 

AFGE Legislative Alert -- Act Now To Protect Veterans Health Care!

 

FYI Read Below

 

• Call your Senators Today!

VA employees,You can use your personal cell phone on your own time but do not use government equipment or make your call on duty time.

 

To: VHACAN AFGE Membership, All Veterans organizations, Veterans , Family members and Friends:

Once again be advise to the VA employees, do not use any form of government duty time or sent to others using government equipment, because

it suggests action to be taken in support or against legislation.

 

Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 3:12 PM

Subject: Act Now To Protect Veterans Health Care!

 

On September 15th, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee will vote on S. 1182, which includes a proposal (Section 7) that will put 36,000 VA jobs at risk

by diverting money from veterans' health care to pay for contracting out studies. The proposal will pad the pockets of contracting out consultants at the

expense of America's veterans who aren't getting the health care they were promised because the money isn't there. Moreover, good jobs will be destroyed

- many of which are held by veterans. Section 7 must be removed from the VA Authorization bill!

 

Take Action Now:

 

List of 2 items

• Email or Fax Your Senators Now!

If you email info on this issue to a friend or coworker, please make sure you use their home email address.

 

• Call your Senators Today!

You can use your personal cell phone on your own time but do not use government equipment or make your call on duty time.

 

list end

 

Background: Under current law, the VA is prevented from taking money from veterans' medical care and using it to conduct privatization reviews unless Congress

appropriates money specifically for that purpose. AFGE has successfully worked in past years with bipartisan majorities in Congress to prevent such an

appropriation from being made. But Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), Chair of the Senate VA Committee, has included a provision in S.1182 called "Section 7"

that repeals the requirement that money must be specifically appropriated for privatization reviews. Fortunately, Senator Akaka (D-HI) has agreed to offer

an amendment that will remove Section 7.

 

The Committee is scheduled to write ("mark-up") their final bill next week - on Thursday September 15th. Seven Committee members of the Committee, including

a Republican and Independent, have told AFGE that they oppose Section 7 and will support the Akaka Amendment (indicated by "+" next to their name.) We

need one more vote for victory.

 

Roster of Senate Veterans Affairs Committee:

 

Republicans

Craig (ID), Chair

Specter (PA)+

Hutchison (TX)

Graham (SC)

Burr (NC)

Ensign (NV)

Thune (SD)

Isakson (GA)

 

Democrats

Akaka (HI)+

Rockefeller (WV)+

Murray (WA)+

Obama (IL)+

Salazar (CO)+

 

Independent

Jeffords (VT)+

 

If your Senators aren't on the Committee they still need to hear from us for two reasons. First, before the markup, they can tell Senator Craig that they

want Section 7 taken out of the bill. Second, if the contracting out language stays in the bill and Committee approves it on September 15th, then we will

have to take our fight to the full Senate. That will be our last chance to have this language struck from the bill or stop the entire bill from moving

forward.

Take Action Now:

 

 

Sent To:

Gene D. Simes Veterans For Veteran Connection, in behalf of, Operation Firing for Effect. and Project America

 

Here is a file I put together regarding the allocation of funding to explore contracting fro VA Services I got the full bill from Gov Track and it follows the AFGE announcement I will print a copy and drop it off at Ralph’s in the am let me know if there is anything else I can do.

 

Here are several news story covering the changes proposed.

 

 

 

Forum, 7-23: Keep VA money for veterans care
By Patrick Russell, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, Local 1539, representing employees at the Hot Springs VA Medical Center, and president of the AFGE Veterans Affairs Council 259.

HOT SPRINGS - It's no secret that health care for veterans is underfunded in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Despite Bush administration denials, its constantly escalating numbers for veterans' health-care funding speaks otherwise. Earlier this summer, we learned that the VA developed its fiscal 2005 health care budget without factoring in the new vets coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

After admitting to the shortfall, the White House insisted that an additional $975 million would fill a gap that most observers estimate at several billion dollars. Just a few weeks later, we see them going back to Congress, hat in hand, to request yet an additional $3 billion to cover gaps in funding for veterans health benefits for fiscal 2006.

These requests, however, cannot hide the fact that veterans are suffering needlessly. For their commitment, the government promised to take care of their health needs once their time in the military had ended. The vets kept their promise, but the government now stands on the brink of breaking its covenant.

In VA medical facilities throughout the country, stories abound of long waits for appointments, equipment jerry-rigged for purposes other than its original intent and surgeries cancelled for budgetary reasons. All this is in spite of the fact that the Bush administration is now turning away vets of modest means and has forbidden VA personnel to promote its health care services to veterans not yet enrolled in the system.

Now, the Senate is considering legislation that will divert, from an already shallow pool, VA health care dollars into the hands of management consultants and private contractors.

As the law now stands, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the entity that operates the VA medical system, is prohibited from using its funds to conduct cost-comparison studies that are a part of the privatization process known as A-76. These studies usually carry price tags in the millions of dollars - dollars that wind up in the pockets of the private-sector consultants retained to conduct the studies.

The administration talks a good game about cost-savings through the contracting out of government work. Notwithstanding numerous studies - some even conducted by the government - that challenge the veracity of that claim.

Take, for example, a privatization review conducted by the Department of Commerce. According to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), this study has already cost taxpayers more than $40,000 for each employee whose job was studied - and the review isn't yet over. Of the more than $1 million spent thus far on this privatization review, two-thirds of this amount went to a consultant. When veterans are being turned away from health care their government promised them, such disbursements of taxpayer dollars to private consultants seems nearly criminal.

Already the VA medical system is overwhelmed with the influx of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the Government Accountability Office says the VA is unable, through lack of adequate data, to assess its own capacity for the care of an increasing number of vets who bear the scars of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which is occurring with alarming frequency among our troops.

South Dakota is home to nearly 80,000 veterans. If the American people allow the Senate to move ahead with this unconscionable diversion of veterans' health care dollars into the hands of management consultants, what are we saying to soldiers, sailors and Marines in South Dakota and the rest of the nation? Shouldn't their care rank high on the list when disbursements of taxpayer dollars are prioritized?

At the very least, health care for those who pledged their lives to their country should come before the profits of private contractors.

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Senate Bill Would Devastate Veterans and VA Workers

SENATE VETERANS' AFFAIRS COMMITTEE CONSIDERS LEGISLATION THAT WOULD DIVERT SCARCE FUNDS FROM VETERANS' HEALTH CARE BUDGET

( Washington)—The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is applauding lawmakers and veterans’ service organizations, including the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) and AMVETS, in their efforts to strip language from a Senate bill that would divert funds for veterans’ medical care into the hands of private management consultants for the conduct of expensive cost-comparison studies that set the stage for the outsourcing of federal jobs.

This week the Senate Veterans Affairs (VA) Committee will mark up S. 1182, the Veterans Health Care Act of 2005. The language in question, Section 7, would repeal the cost comparison prohibition in Title 38 [38 USC, Section 8110 (a) (5)], a 24-year-old safeguard that Congress has maintained to protect funds appropriated for veterans medical care from being diverted to pay for private-public cost comparison reviews, the first step in the outsourcing of federal jobs. The language in Section 7 that would repeal the cost comparison prohibition is in the version introduced by VA Committee Chairman Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho).

As the law stands, funds appropriated for VA medical care “may not be used for, and no employee compensated from such funds may carry out any activity in connection with, the conduct of any study comparing the cost of the provision by private contractors with the cost of the provision by the Department of commercial or industrial products and services for the Veterans Health Administration unless such funds have been specifically appropriated for that purpose.”

According to the Office of Management and Budget, (OMB), in 2004, $110 million was spent government-wide for public-private competitions to determine whether more than 12,000 jobs could be done more efficiently by private contractors, with in-house federal workers winning 91 percent of the time. Ironically, the efforts to further drain the veterans’ health care funding budget come on the heels of the VA admitting to a $1.5 billion shortfall for fiscal 2005 and an anticipated $1.98 billion shortfall in fiscal 2006 for veterans’ health care.

“Despite warnings from both Democrats and Republicans, the Administration refused to plan for an anticipated influx of veterans from conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, we promised these brave men and women health care in exchange for their sacrifice no matter the circumstances,” says AFGE National President John Gage. “Now the VA wants to use these hard won health care dollars on programs that would only destabilize the VA healthcare workplace and put veterans in VA facilities out of work. That’s flat-out wrong and our veterans don’t deserve this kind of treatment.”

One in three employees targeted for outsourcing at the Veterans Health Administration is a veteran.

In an effort to keep the prohibition against cost comparison reviews in tact, DAV, PVA and AMVETS have sent letters supporting Sen. Daniel Akaka’s (D-Hawaii) plan to offer an amendment that would strike Section 7 from the Veterans Health Care Act.

“Evidenced by recent Congressional actions regarding the adequacy of VA medical care funding, now is not the time to allow the VA to draw away critical health care dollars when the medical system is already struggling to meet the demand being placed on the system,” writes Joseph A. Violante, national legislative director, DAV, and Richard Fuller, national legislative director, PVA in a joint letter sent to Sen. Akaka.

In a separate letter to Sen. Akaka, AMVETS National Legislative Director Richard Jones writes, “AMVETS does not support the use of critically scarce medical care resources for the purpose of studying private-public competition. We firmly believe these dollars would be better used in the direct provision of actual medical care.”

Additionally, in a letter sent to Chairman Craig, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), one of the first Senators to anticipate the VA budget shortfalls, urged Sen. Craig to exclude Section 7 from consideration during the Committee mark up. In addition to Murray, the letter also was signed by VA Committee members Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-W.V.), Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.).

“[A]s the VA struggles to address a severe funding shortfall, it makes little sense to divert precious health care dollars to pay for an unnecessary and expensive privatization review,” writes Sen. Murray in her letter to Sen. Craig. “…In food, housekeeping and grounds maintenance services, three activities particularly targeted by OMB for privatization reviews, a majority of the affected employees are veterans.”

 

 Take Action now

Gene D. Simes

 

For further information call VFVC, Operation Firing for Effect at 315 986-7322 or 585 329-4711.

This has been announced on the Rochester, New York Tradio station, WHAM 1180 on Auguest 10, 2005 time