Cass Ballenger: “Mr. Chairman, I just want to get something off my chest. I just want to take a few minutes to air my opinion about our…”

“Mr. Chairman, I just want to get something off my chest. I just want to take a few minutes to air my opinion about our VA medical system. My older brother died in a veterans hospital 100 miles from his home. When a veteran is diagnosed with a terminal condition and is near death, why can that veteran not be allowed to spend his remaining days in a local hospital near his family and friends who will come and visit him? I would also like to criticize the treatment many of our veterans receive in VA hospitals and the expenditure of tax dollars on new VA construction, when many existing VA hospitals are underutilized with many beds empty. In Catawba County, North Carolina, when I was a county commissioner, we built a state-of-the-art 250-bed hospital for less than $8 million, complete with an oncology unit and outpatient unit. Now the VA is constructing an outpatient clinic in the mountains of North Carolina for an estimated $25 million. It is an expansion to an existing 300-bed VA hospital that is less than 50 percent occupied. Why should those tax dollars not be used to better utilize the existing underused space and transfer the remaining funds to provide the needed doctors, nurses, and medicine? Does anyone examine how VA capital expenditures are being made and whether they are needed or not?”