David Schweikert: “This is sort of a derivative of the previous amendment. The previous amendment was to speed up and expedite claims. This…”

“This is sort of a derivative of the previous amendment. The previous amendment was to speed up and expedite claims. This one is actually now to crawl through, and if my colleagues geek out like I do on how the artificial intelligence crawls through data stacks and can identify outliers or patterns, this one actually utilizes that same sort of data to streamline oversight, to reduce fraud, to basically identify where you have areas that are saying: This doesn't look right. Why is there a difference between different parts of the VA or different parts of the country? The amendment is specifically focused on financial management. Where one is moving claims and helping veterans be able to see what their benefits are and moving it faster, this one actually looks at the books because we have to have a moment of honesty. If Members basically take the number of veterans that use the VA and divide it by the spending, you are somewhere around $38,000 per veteran that use the facilities. That is an outlier in any category of healthcare. Could this help us understand what we are doing well, but also where there are outliers? In some ways, this was a way to help me deal with my discomfort with the costs per delivery. I couldn't identify what was wrong. This should help GAO and other experts simply identify that the VA is doing this great, but we have an issue here. I am hoping this technology brings that to the surface. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.”