The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing included witnesses from several private sector companies who were there to discuss their healthcare-focused tech solutions. Democrats like Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez, however, criticized the discussion as feeling like “a sales pitch instead of a real conversation about how we modernize the VA in order to provide the highest quality of care for our veterans.”
The hearing came after VA Secretary Doug Collins said last month that the department is looking to cut unnecessary contracts and let go of as many as 80,000 employees across its operations later this year to return to its 2019 staffing levels. Collins said the reductions would not affect mission-critical positions across the agency and would be tailored to enhance the delivery of veterans’ benefits and healthcare services.
The top Democrat on the panel, California Rep. Mark Takano, however, said the overall spending cuts and workforce layoffs are “forcing VA to decide between keeping staff on the floor, and investing in expensive equipment that may sit idle without enough personnel to operate it.”
Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill. — the ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Technology Modernization Subcommittee — also echoed Takano’s comments, expressing particular concern that cuts to the staffing and budget of VA’s Office of Information and Technology “will disrupt VA’s IT modernization efforts.”
“It seems tone deaf to engage in conversations about innovative biomedical equipment wh ..
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