If the Honorables could spare a moment for a more pressing health care debate ...

Perhaps this is the health care issue Capitol Hill should have been focused on the last few months, instead of the heated, redundant and utterly futile one that just sputtered to a merciful halt.

The Department of Veterans Affairs reported Tuesday that its Veterans Choice health care program, approved by Congress three years ago after the VA hospital scandal of long waits and fraudulent patient records, is running out of money.

This can’t have come as much of a surprise; Congress approved $2.1 billion in emergency funding just last month. Now the VA says that money will almost certainly be gone by next spring, and maybe before the end of this year.

Veterans Choice allows vets to get private health care if they must wait 30 days or longer, or drive more than 40 miles, for an appointment at a VA facility. It was created in 2014 after the nation was shocked and disgusted by revelations of veterans having to wait for months (months, as it turned out, that many of them didn’t have) for VA appointments — a fact that had been concealed in many cases by VA employees cooking the patient records.

It’s a program created with the best of intentions and for the best of reasons. But that outside medical care isn’t free, any more than taxpayer-funded health care is free. By this year, Associated Press reports, veterans were again facing delays as the VA limited referrals to private treatment.

There are ideologically conflicting ideas, mostly about the role of the VA itself. As AP reports, the more liberal VoteVets organization wants less privatization, pointing to VA health care positions that need to be filled (the VA itself says there are about 34,000 vacancies). Policy researcher Carrie Farmer of the RAND Corp. says many vets see the VA as a “medical home” staffed by specialists with an understanding of veterans’ medical issues.

The conservative Concerned Veterans for America, cautioning Congress not do “double down on the failed VA policies of the past,” would prefer to give veterans nearly unlimited freedom to seek private medical care.

All of these points of view deserve thoughtful consideration.

These are critical issues affecting American veterans, issues that obviously did not spring up full blown yesterday. But the long-festering problems at the VA weren’t something the congressional majority could noisily lay at feet of the previous administration, so those problems have had to take a back seat to more politically charged health care matters. (The valiant and tireless efforts of, among others, Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chair of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, are a noteworthy exception to the above.)

The timeworn political truism that “you can’t solve a problem by throwing money at it” is especially vapid when the fundamental problem is a lack of money. Congress is supposed to take up tax “reform” next. It will be interesting to see how veterans’ health care fares in that debate.

This story was originally published September 27, 2017 at 6:17 PM with the headline "If the Honorables could spare a moment for a more pressing health care debate ...."