VA to spend $54B on healthcare in 2012

WASHINGTON – The number of veterans receiving VA healthcare and benefits now stands at a record 8.4 million and is projected to hit 8.6 million by 2012, according to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

 

"I project that the numbers will continue to grow," Shinseki told hundreds of American Legion members in late March at the organization's 51^st Annual Washington Conference. He said the department's budget would be expected to keep climbing as well, especially as veterans of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan enter the system.

 

"These numbers will continue to rise for many years, many decades after the last combatant comes home from Iraq and Afghanistan, Shinseki said. "This is reality."

 

President Barack Obama has proposed a 10.6 percent increase in the VA budget for 2012 – with $132 billion divided almost evenly between mandated and discretionary costs. The highest expected discretionary cost, medical care, is proposed to consume $53.9 billion.

 

Shinseki said fast-rising demand for VA care, benefits and services has hindered the VA's efforts to reduce its backlog of undecided claims. The number of completed claims decisions from the VA hit 1 million in 2010, a historic high, but the number of new cases flowing into the system topped 1.2 million.

 

"This year, we are programmed to receive somewhere between 1.4 million and 1.5 million claims," Shinseki told conference attendees. "This growth is tied in part to the economic downturn. The numbers are large, and merely hiring more claims processors won't give us an added capability to dominate this kind of growth pattern."

 

The VA intends to use automation to reduce the backlog without compromising quality.

"We must automate, and we must do it quickly," Shinseki said. "That is something that should have happened in VA decades ago, and that is where we are heading."

 

The secretary also highlighted the VA's efforts to end homelessness among veterans and provide healthcare to this vulnerable population. To that end, the agency is considering using its vacant or underused buildings to house homeless or at-risk veterans and their families.

 

"VA has identified 94 sites which will potentially add about 6,300 units of housing through public-private ventures," Shinseki said.