Mark Begich

Thank you very much, General.

It is all Federal monies, regardless of which Federal agency is providing that care, the IHS or the VA.

Let me hold you there, then, and I will probably have some questions for you.

The more defined data you can provide, the better off.

This is one thing that we have: for a huge opportunity for medical facilities, and Indian Health Care Service is a great example.

Our doors in Alaska are open to anyone, regardless of race or whoever they are.

I will say this, and I appreciate that, because I know when you do these programs, sometimes you want to just keep going down the path, but this is a moment, I think, where we can make a shift, reexamine it, and probably have a much more…

We have one of the highest percent per capita, so we have a huge demand for veterans' services in Alaska.

We have to continue to get that. We can't even make some decisions with our committee because we don't know where they are, what disease entity they might have, and what services should be placed in those areas.

There is no more rural State than Alaska in the sense of delivery of services and how you can get from one point to the next.

There was a Memorandum of Understanding that was signed way back in February 2003 between the VA, HHS, and IHS that said they would collaborate together on how to provide better access and how to develop better processes and systems of…

We also did a MOU in 2007 working with the VA to prepare for the returning 100 soldiers that were coming out of rural Alaska, 26 villages.

If you can do it in Alaska, you can do it anywhere.

It's all Federal monies regardless of which Federal agency provides the care, the VA or the IHS.

It is very important, obviously, to many of our States here, but very much so to Alaska, which is very, very rural in a lot of ways and access issues are a huge problem.

If there is a kind of freeze-frame and it gets altered in the sense of a new idea of how to improve rural health care, does the consortium have the capacity in the areas from the small villages on up to meet probably what you might…

Again, this is very parochial, but can you give me any update on the Juneau facility?

We see these as very important issues and are trying to deal with them.

I know it is a concern for Senator Murray.

I think the higher the elevation you can give it, the better off we are.

Do you think elevating that to a higher level will get some more recognition of the data that needs to be collected...

If I can, Dr. Jesse, let me add follow-up questions in regards to telemedicine, but also on utilization by other facilities that are non-VA regarding the contracts that you are trying to work out.

There has been some good testimony on telehealth. In Alaska, we use it a great deal...

Would it be fair, in our conversation we had, that there is some differences...

I do have--I want to restate some of the questions we talked about.