TOPICS
TOPICS
Move to lift ban on VA competitive sourcing prompts opposition
Senate Democrats, union officials and veterans groups are rallying support to strip a health care bill of a provision that would allow the Veterans Affairs Department to resume competitive sourcing studies.
Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, plans to introduce an amendment to the 2005 Veterans Health Care Act (S. 1182) on Thursday that would preserve language in a 1981 law, which - as interpreted by the VA general counsel in April 2003 - has effectively stopped public-private job competitions at the VA. Akaka will introduce the amendment during the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee markup of the bill.
The existing statutory language bars the Veterans Health Administration from comparing the cost of keeping work in-house to that of outsourcing it unless Congress directs funds toward such a study. It is on a list of barriers to competitive sourcing that the Bush administration has said it would like to see eliminated.
Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Larry Craig, R-Idaho, included language lifting the ban as part of the health care act.
"As a general matter, I believe it makes good fiscal sense for government to measure its performance against that of its counterparts in the private sector," Craig wrote in an Aug. 23 letter defending his move to an American Federation of Government Employees representative. "Based on that belief, it follows that I do not agree that anyone should be statutorily protected from having his or her performance measured against others in a similar field."
But backed by the union and a number of veterans groups, Akaka will offer an amendment striking Craig's provision from the bill. The Veterans Affairs Department should not be spending money running competitive sourcing studies when the agency is under a budget crunch, Craig's opponents argue.
"[We do] not support the use of critically scarce medical care resources for the purpose of studying public-private competition," Vietnam Veterans of America President John Rowan wrote in a Wednesday letter backing Akaka. "We firmly believe these dollars would be better used in the direct provision of actual medical care."
Leaders of the Blinded Veterans Association, AMVETS, Disabled American Veterans and Paralyzed Veterans of America wrote similar letters.
"Even as retired veterans and VA employees are being displaced from their homes and as loyal VA workers are rolling up their sleeves to help people devastated by the hurricane, the administration is ready to add to the devastation by using hard-won health care dollars on programs that will destabilize the VA health care workplace and put veterans working in VA facilities out of work," AFGE President John Gage said in a statement.
VA's resources should be spent on patient care and repairs of medical facilities, Gage said.
But Craig argued that VA's budget of more than $70 billion is large enough to sustain competitive sourcing. "I am confident that allocating a small amount of this budget towards programs and reviews will ultimately bolster the quality of VA services," he said.
Veterans Affairs hasn't been active in competitive sourcing because of the statutory restrictions and has earned red lights - the lowest of three ratings - for both progress and accomplishments in that area of the Bush administration's quarterly management score card. The department is looking at alternatives to public-private competitions, including business-process reengineering studies, which are geared toward improving the in-house workforce's efficiency.
COMMENTS
- It is clear that AFGE, Senator Akaka and, yes, the Veterans groups themselves all believe that the quality of veterans health care should be measured simply by the number of Federal employees in VHA facilites. That of course assumes that there are no budget contraints on veterans health care and no need for any comparable performance measures. Hey, if the veterans groups think its good enough, then it must be good enough. Money spent is a good measure of quality health care and money spent on federal employees is an even better measure of performance. What a geat service the Senator and those groups have done to protect and serve our veterans. Thanks again. Let'em compete - Senator - and let them prove their worth in a clearly commercial activity - they may win - and until they do - you are responsible for the care those veteran receive. GovExec.com reader Posted September 15, 2005 3:26 PM
- As a member of the federal workforce, you can believe that it isn't those with 20 years, as the writer put it, who doesn't do what they are paid for, this is all over the government and always has been. By far and large, government employees do more than they are asked in most cases. CRAIG is an example of a politician who slowly, but methodically, makes attempts to destroy the VA and open it all up to public bidding, from healthcare to other benefits which veterans are entitled to. He is a loose nut. Charlie (military retiree) Posted September 15, 2005 3:02 PM
- "The Veterans Affairs Department should not be spending money running competitive sourcing studies when the agency is under a budget crunch" say the oponents of Craig's bill...but what about spending money on employees who have 20 years of service but don't do the work they were hired to do. AFGE spends way too much time and money defending bad employees. Sometimes outsourcing is a way to get the work done. And sometimes the threat of outsourcing is a way to get employees to actually earn their paycheck. GovExec.com reader Posted September 15, 2005 9:20 AM
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