According to a recent NPR story (Morning Edition, September 9, 2008) the Bush administration has announced plans to overhaul the GI Bill, a federal program that has paid for 22 million American veterans and family members to attend college since the end of WWII. In an attempt to streamline the application process, the VA wants to turn part of the GI bill over to private industry to design a computer system to review and process applications, replacing the 850 government workers currently responsible for this work. Doing so, VA officials claim, would save tax-payer money and dramatically reduce the time veterans have to wait to have their applications reviewed.
Keith Pedigo, Associate Deputy Undersecretary for Policy and Program Management and the Department of Veterans Affairs, is a strong advocate of the proposed changes: “Presently, it takes us about 20 days to process an original claim from a veteran…But if you ask them if they would rather have it processed in one minute, my guess is most of them would opt for the one minute approach.”
But, as some veterans’ advocates have pointed out, the privatization of government programs is not without its own risks. In 2003, the department hired a private contractor to design and install a computer program to monitor the use of supplies in VA hospitals. $300 million later, not only was the program still not operational, it had actually made things worse by causing numerous supply shortages: surgeries were postponed because necessary supplies were unavailable and some doctors were forced to buy their own latex gloves. Although the program was ultimately abandoned, the company responsible for the failure went unpenalized, and went on to become a major contractor in Iraq.
If VA officials don’t seem to remember this scandal, veterans’ advocates certainly do. Advocates like Rick Weidman, director of Vietnam Veterans of America, worry about what will happen to veterans if something goes wrong again this time, and about who can be held accountable when the government privatizes its programs: “Anything goes wrong. I’ll tell you what will happen, and it’s what always happens in these instances, is they’ll say, well, it was not our job, it’ s the VA’s. And the VA will say, we can’t do anything, it’s contracted out. It’s the contractor’s job. And that is baloney. The problem isn’t the troops, the problem is the leadership.”
The VA has, thus far, been quite secretive about the details of this proposal. Reports indicate that they’ve handpicked a small number of private companies to compete for the contract, but no indication has been made about the identity of these companies.
Some news reports need no editorializing. They just make you sick.
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