Far fewer veterans use choice card and private health care than expected

By Emily Wax-Thibodeaux

Only 27,000 veterans have made appointments for private medical care since the Department of Veteran’s Affairs Choice Card program rolled out at the start of November, Secretary Robert “Bob” McDonald said this week.

It’s such a tiny number compared with the 9 million people who use VA health care that McDonald has asked for “flexibility” to reallocate billions of dollars for other pressing matters, from hiring more claims officers to help wade through a vast veterans’ benefits backlog to managing other patient medical needs.

The VA’s release of the choice chard numbers is at the heart of a controversy over President Obama’s 2016 budget, which asks for authority to reallocate funds from the temporary $10 billion program that Congress established last year to help former troops struggling to obtain care at vastly overstrapped VA clinics.

House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) has roundly rejected the plan, calling it a “complete non-starter, which I will not support.”

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