A delegation from Hot Springs fighting the proposed closure of the VA Medical Center met with Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki and other top department officials for about 90 minutes yesterday in Washington and came away encouraged about their chances of killing the plan.
Rich Gross of the Save the VA Committee told the Rapid City Journal the meet ran twice as long as scheduled with Shinseki giving the presentation close attention. Four other Save the VA members…Pat Russell, Bob Nelson, Amanda Campbell and Don Ackerman…joined Gross in the presentation.
The VA Black Hills Health Care System wants to close the Hot Spring Center and replace it with an outpatient clinic and dialysis center, a new long-term treatment program in Rapid City, and expanded contracting with health care providers around the region…saying it would be cheaper and more efficient that upgrading the existing center.
Save the VA developed a counter-proposal, rejected by the VA, that would keep the Hot Spring center open through a combination of cost-cutting moves, innovative Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder treatment programs, job-training, and national demonstration project for a commercial manufacturing venture using VA patients and others.
The presentation on the counter-proposal included a video from Oglala Sioux President Bryan Brewer opposing the VA closure plan because of its potential impact on Native American veterans. Brewer is continuing to recover from injuries suffered in a car accident last month, and couldn’t make it to Washington.
Gross told the Journal that after yesterday’s meeting that Secretary Shinseki promised “due deliberation” in considering both the VA plan and the Save the VA counter-proposal, indicating he would probably be talking or meeting with backers of the Hot Springs center before making a final decision.
The meeting was set up by South Dakota’s congressional delegation and was held in Senator Tim Johnson’s office with Senator John Thune, Congresswoman Kristi Noem, and Governor Dennis Daugaard also taking part.
They issued a joint news release afterward saying they were pleased with the meeting. Daugaard praised the Hot Springs group for a “strong, succinct presentation,” and was pleased that Shinseki allowed the meeting to run so much longer than scheduled.
Johnson, the lone Democrat and the one who set up the meeting after Shinseki turned down their initial request to come to Hot Springs for a meeting and a follow-up request for a meeting in Washington, said he still wants to “make sure the VA takes the Save the VA group’s concerns and proposals into account when considering changes to the Black Hills Health Care System.”
Senator Thune said he was confident the meeting conveyed to the Secretary “the significant obstacles” that closing Hot Springs poses to providing area veterans with the “highest-quality health care,” while Noem said she believed the presentation had an impact on Shinseki and believed him when he said he had not made a decision but would like to make one sooner rather than later.”