Wasserman Schultz suggested the committee might begin to condition funding for electronic health records contractors on the companies meeting certain benchmarks. Full committee ranking member Kay Granger, R-Texas, indicated she would support such a move as long as it didn’t withhold funding from the VA itself and only the contractors were affected.
The legislation would provide $104.8 billion in discretionary funds for the VA, a $12.3 billion or 13 percent boost compared with current funding levels.
The vast majority of that funding, $90 billion, would go to veterans’ medical care programs, including mental health care, homelessness assistance programs, women-specific care programs, opioid abuse prevention and rural health care initiatives. That total funding level represents a $9.8 billion boost in spending compared with current funding levels.
Appropriators included $2.6 billion for ongoing efforts to implement an electronic health care records system that should allow a much easier transfer of information from the Pentagon’s computers to the VA’s health care system. That represents a $1.1 billion boost in funding.
Military construction accounts would see a $1.2 billion drop in funding in the upcoming fiscal year to $10.1 billion, although that figure doesn’t take into account disaster funding approved during fiscal 2020. Another $350 million for bases in Europe and elsewhere would be provided with an Overseas Contingency Operations designation, which doesn’t count toward discretionary budget caps.
