A senior Department of Veterans Affairs administrator is promising to address concerns he heard Tuesday in Fairbanks. Dr. Baligh Yehia was in Alaska conducting listening sessions of Alaska vets. Many of the attendees expressed doubt any change would come from the event.
Some fifty people gathered at the Murie Auditorium on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus Tuesday. Though a significant fraction of those attending were part of the entourage following Assistant Deputy Undersecretary Baligh Yehia as he tours Alaska. Dr. Yehia acknowledged problems exist getting health care to Alaska veterans. He said many of them stem from “The Choice Program” enacted by Congress almost two years ago, an effort to allow veterans to receive care from providers outside the system.
“Part of the law asked the VA to behave in a very different way,” Yehia said. “It asked veterans to use a system that they weren’t used to. So it created a lot of confusion.”
Yehia said his visit to Alaska was an effort to identify persistent glitches in the system and to fix them. But that assertion didn’t sit well with many veterans in the audience. Walter Watts, Department Commander of the Veteran of Foreign Wars pointed to earlier listening sessions that produced little change.
“We keep hearing the same information and so what happens is they’re not coming to the listening sessions,” Watts said. “There’s no new information being put out. There’s no results being provided back or shown to the veterans that came to those sessions.”
Other testimony centered on the bewildering number of 800 numbers veterans have to navigate to get care and the bureaucratic red tape that holds up payments. Dr. Yehia reassured the audience the VA took earlier testimony seriously. He said insurance providers were actually embedded in communities to provide a more local response when concerns were raised.
Yehia promised his staff and local VA professionals present would continue to work improving the experience of the veterans. Dr. Yehia continues his listening sessions in Anchorage today.
