By Adam Smeltz
The Department of Veterans Affairs is failing to make enough rural health care available to veterans who live far from VA medical centers, a breakdown that violates the intent of a 2014 federal law, more than two dozen senators say.
They helped pass the Veterans Choice, Access and Accountability Act, meant in part to improve health care access for veterans who live more than 40 miles from VA facilities or who must wait more than a month for VA care.
Veterans in those circumstances are entitled to a Choice Card, which should grant them faster or closer care in a non-VA facility at the VA’s expense, according to the law that President Obama signed in August.
But VA officials since November have authorized only 0.37 percent â or about 30,000 patients â out of 8.5 million cardholders nationwide to receive non-VA care, Sen. Pat 
Toomey and 27 other senators wrote Wednesday to VA Secretary Robert McDonald. They argued the VA is imposing a much-too-narrow interpretation of the eligibility criteria.
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