As many as 17,400 veterans were stuck with bills for emergency medical care that the VA should have covered but did not.
NBC News’ recent article, “VA wrongfully denied $53 million in veterans' medical claims in one 6-month period, says report,” reports that the emergency appendectomy went well. The vet made a quick recovery. Her private insurance covered the lion’s share of the $20,000 bill for her hospital stay. However, six months later, the VA denied her claim for the remaining $2,500. This placed the vet in an unexpected financial bind.
She has been appealing ever since.
"It's one of those things where you thought that they would be there and they're not," the Coast Guard veteran explained. She also adopted her nephew soon after the surgery and has been watching her budget to care for him.
The vet believed that she was living in her own private insurance hell, until a report from the VA's Inspector General showed many issues in the way that the VA reimburses veterans for emergency care at non-VA facilities. In one recent six-month period, the VA left about 17,400 veterans to pay out-of-pocket for emergency medical treatment the federal government should have covered. The report said that between April 1 and Sept. 30, 2017, veterans who received emergency care at non-VA facilities had to pay $53.3 million in medical bills.
Members of Congress, including the chairs of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees want answers.
"No veteran should be afraid to seek care in an emergency room," said Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H., who signed the letter. "Clearly the bureaucracy is favoring speed over accuracy, it's favoring efficiency over the health of our veterans. We've got to make sure that we're putting veterans first."
It was discovered that the office that processes emergency claims for vets has made speed more important than accuracy, according to the Inspector General. Workers were actually offered overtime pay for processing claims quickly. Accuracy was not a priority. As many as a third of claims that were denied or rejected, were found to have been processed incorrectly.
Reference: NBC News (August 16, 2019) “VA wrongfully denied $53 million in veterans' medical claims in one 6-month period, says report”