You at this point. Mr. Kaufman. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, thank you for your service in the United States army. Although the president id like to think the president chose you in recognition. In proctor and gamble. And we had in this committee, my predecessor on the over sight subcommittee had requested a study of Major Construction products and that was done and published in april of 2013. At that time, it said there were four ongoing projects one in las vegas orlando, new orleans aurora colorado listed as denver. That the average 366 Million Dollars over budget. And that they were each on average about three years behind schedule. We clearly knew there was a big problem. If you and proctor and gamble were to step in and you had an apartment that was that dysfunctional, you would have fired the management team. Straightened it out, spotted off when i look at the v. A. , your core competency is benefits to veterans, health care being a significant part of that. Constructi
I gave them my Insurance Information and they came back and they said, we dont know. I would like to know how common that is and what is being done to try to let folks actually know what something costs. I might add, i had at the time a high deductible, so it was an important question about my outofpocket costs. The second question is Medicare Part d, when i noted it in the biography, mr. White was involved with in 2003, has a provision prohibiting the government from negotiating prices with the drug companies. And my question is, why is that still in the law . You want to take that one, ed . Why dont you start and ill do the first one. The second one real quick. The first one was, why cant they tell me what the price is . Like i said, forget about the email. Ask them what a price is and its like getting trade secrets out of cuba, right . Its next to impossible. What were seeing is that what the price is and what i owe are two different questions, right . So if i have coverage, i think
Budgets. We had employees willing to give up compensation to meet this need of veterans in the community. Maybe some bonuses too. Miss walorski. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary good to see you. Thanks for being here today. The problem that i dont understand with this, this is what i dont get, is that it seems like it keeps coming back to this issue of perception. You know you come today and you have your stats and your tables and your graphs and thoed kind of things and we over here, we want Solutions Just as badly as everybody else because were fighting for veterans in our district and fighting in a bipartisan matter and doing everything we can do legally through a legislative process but what weve been up to since you been here last is multiple hearings that go on every other day and look at the whistleblower retaliation, and systematic failures in denver and waste and fraud and abuse and ive been involved and every time your i. T. Chief has been here and we talked about this
Program or were gutting the Choice Program is absolutely positively wrong, proven by the data. 6 billion weve overspent 6 billion this year in in Community Care. Community care is absolutely essential. I think the issue is your hepatitis c drug, 1. 5 billion or whatever the number is for hepatitis c is part of the issue, and i dont think any one of us thinks that we should not be providing that drug. In no budget submission that i can recall was it discussed about that, although im hoping that somebody and ms. Brown actually talked about the forecasting that somebody was looking at the approval of that drug and that it was coming on and that if it did come on that it was going to cause a significant issue as it relates to the nonva care item, line item he, of 6 billion, which is gone now, its never been gone before, but all of a is sudden this year its disappeared. And my question was if we didnt have the pot of money that youre looking at now to solve this crisis, how would we solve t
Again, there was still no mention of a Hospital Systemwide shutdown. And finally at the hearing on june 25th itself there was no mention of a Hospital System shutdown coming in august. Mr. Secretary, im disappointed about the slow, painstaking revelation of this crisis by the department thats led by you. I understand their excuses as to why we are in it this position, however, somebody somewhere took their eye off the ball. Just as congress established a cap on spending for the denver project that va busted, Congress Also provided a budget for va for fiscal year 2015 which the president signed into law and it, too, is now busted. In both instances va has Left Congress with very little time to react to a crisis created by vas own management decisions. While we will not penalize veterans for vas management, or transparency failures, the days when va can come to congress and just say cut us a check are gone. Asking for flexibility without supporting information is not enough. Similar to t