The Misunderstood Brilliance of the VA: To save the Veterans Health Administration, Americans must first appreciate its many achievements.

• Author: Trynosky, Stephen

Wounds of War: How the VA Delivers Health, Healing, and Hope to the Nation's Veterans

by Suzanne Gordon

ILR Press, 464 pp.

In the six decades following World War II, national veterans policy was unusually stable. Even as the tone of American politics shifted dramatically, veterans' issues remained insulated from an increasingly polarized public and Congress. But for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), a perfect storm of disruptive forces coalesced after the 2010 elections: the declining power of traditional veterans service organizations, a whole new level of partisan posturing, and the arrival of aggressive, corporate-funded lobbying in a place that previously saw little of it. The VA governance structure and organizational culture were thoroughly unsuited to navigate this new environment. The department is now being bombarded by criticism, and the VA's health care arm, the Veterans Health Administration, is facing persistent calls for more privatization.

In this context, the return of divided government is cause for cautious optimism. The Democrats' recapture of the House has the potential to invigorate debates surrounding the VA. Critically, it might create a counterweight to proposals written by advocates of privatization.

But any attempt to thoughtfully shape the VA's future will require engaged and informed legislators. And here, there's cause for concern. Only a single member of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Florida Republican Gus Bilirakis, also serves on one of the House committees in charge of setting America's broader health care policy. The current House can and should fix this. But until it does, congressional oversight of the Veterans Health Administration--the nation's largest integrated health care network--will remain essentially divorced from oversight over the rest of America's medical system.

Even worse, most House members do not see much value in working on veterans' health care. As former Democratic Representative Beto O'Rourke bluntly observed, the Veterans Affairs committee "is not a place from which a member can successfully raise money from the special interests who have a stake in the legislative outcomes. It's also not a high-profile committee, and the work is really tough." Consequently, the panel's representatives generally leave for more prestigious committees as soon as they can. California Democrat Mark Takano, the committee's current chairman, just started his fourth term in office. Ten of...