Dan Benishek

I am not sure that requires congressional action, I think it may be more of a bureaucratic solution.

The question is, so is there somewhere in your plan that will allow a veteran to make a single phone call and find out?

I understand your thoughts, but specifically how are you going to get the VA to be assured that they are going to be paid?

I appreciate you all being here today. You know, my concern, I think everyone's concern here is that the veteran get care.

I think that goes back to both the fault of the VA and the Congress. We should have done a better job of putting it out there with bullet points.

I am afraid we and the VA, especially on cost, is looking through the soda straw and not the overall picture.

Once in, you are in. That should be fairly simple.

But nobody is actually prosecuted for this kind of thing, it doesn't sound like.

But not the people that I talk to see this all the time, where people are turning down work to stay on the program.

Well, no, I am all for the people that are really poor, and who are unable to find work, to access the program. That is why we want to be sure that there are enough funds to help those people.

But I just want to spend a minute, or a second, given the time, also just calling out that we do have a growing number of extremely poor families in this country, the folks who are living below 50 percent of the poverty----

Many of my constituents ask me the same thing every time we talk about SNAP, okay, and I am just going to the work requirement, fraud, and how would somebody transition out of SNAP when they get a job?

So how do we make this easier to determine whether you can't get a job or you don't want a job?

I am a firm believer in public-private partnerships, and really believe that many of these nonprofit groups... are very helpful in knowing more about the individual than the Federal Government does.

Thank you both for your testimony.

I tried to bring it up when Mr. Lieu was here.

Well I guess I understand that. It is just that you guys set up this third party administration of the Choice program providers.

I have been a provider at the VA myself. And I understand lots of those things that you mentioned here.

Frankly, I agree strongly with Mr. O'Rourke and Mr. Lieu.

A lot of us are very frustrated about the rate of change or the pace of change.

I cared about the patient.

So where is that data? I haven't seen anything.

I don't understand why there is such a huge difference in the cost.

That is the whole basis of this hearing is the fact that they may be making plans on data that has no validity.

One of the things I have been trying to do in this committee is to try to get the VA to collect more data.