An agreement has been reached on the looming work stoppage for the Aurora Veterans Affairs hospital, with U.S. House Speaker John Boehner agreeing to a three-week extension that will give more time to negotiate a longer-term agreement.
A bill by U.S. Representative Mike Coffman (R-Aurora), HR 2496, the Construction Authorization and Choice Improvement Act, will help keep the Aurora VA hospital from shutting down this weekend by raising the authorization cap to $900 million and reforming elements of the Choice Act that will help veterans receive care outside of the VA system.
The VA hospital construction project, meant to replace an aging facility in Denver, has seen its cost nearly triple from an original estimate of $600 million to the recent estimate by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers of $1.73 billion, thanks to mismanagement and incompetence on behalf of the VA.
Work was set to stop this Sunday if Congress did not raise the authorization cap for the project. The current authorization cap is set at $800 million.
The agreement will be voted on the House floor today. It raises the authorization cap to $900 million and makes improvements to the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act, a bill passed in 2014 that allowed veterans to get private health care reimbursed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) if they lived more than 40 miles from a VA facility or had to wait more than 30 days for an appointment. The agreement will codify the recent rule by the VA that the 40 miles is defined by how far a veteran needs to drive for care, and not 40 miles “as the crow flies.” It will also allow the VA Secretary greater discretion to let veterans access care outside the VA system.
“I am greatly relieved that we will have more time to negotiate a longer term deal for the Aurora VA hospital,” said Coffman, a Marine Corps combat veteran and Chairman of the House Veterans Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. “The VA ignored my warnings for two years that the Aurora hospital was out-of-control and their refusal to heed my warnings has made a bad situation much worse. This should never have come to this, but as I have continually said, my first priority has always been to get this hospital built so it can serve the men and women who served this nation.”
