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Subcommittee Considers Bill to Bar VA From Collecting Some Late Co‑Pays After System Failures
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Summary
The House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee heard testimony on Representative Gray’s Strife Act, which would prohibit the VA from collecting co‑payments when collection delays result from VA error or the department’s systems, and on oversight evidence that past IT outages left veterans facing delayed bills.
Representative Gray (D-Calif.) urged the subcommittee to pass the Strive Act (H.R. 3812), a bill that would bar the Department of Veterans Affairs from collecting co‑payments in cases where the delay in collection was the VA’s fault, including IT outages, pauses in collections and other administrative errors.
"No veteran should pay the cost of administrative failures or face unexpected costs when receiving care," Representative Gray said, arguing the bill shifts the burden of requesting waivers from individual veterans to the government.
The measure would also allow the VA secretary to enter co‑pay waivers on a veteran’s behalf and would protect veterans from bills for care that is more than two years old or debts exceeding $2,000 when the delay stems from department error.
Why it matters: Witnesses and oversight staff told the subcommittee that past technology and process failures produced a backlog of unpaid bills that can reach veterans years after care was delivered. The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) and VA officials described a pause in the Program Integrity Tool (PIT) that limited the department’s ability to bill or identify improper payments and contributed to veterans receiving delayed bills.
Dr. Jennifer McDonald, Director of the Community Care Division at the VA OIG, said the PIT was paused in February 2023 after data and logic issues were identified and that the pause “was intended to allow VHA time to evaluate the tool’s processes, data, and its underlying IT system.” McDonald testified the pause affected revenue collection and fraud detection capacities.
Ms. Laura Duke, Chief Financial Officer for the Veterans Health Administration, told the committee that the VA does not yet know the full number of veterans affected by the PIT pause until it has completed data ingestion, but added, "I've been shown data that, suggests over 85,000 veterans, were impacted, with the pit pause." Duke said VA is still determining which veterans are liable for co‑payments and which are exempt.
OIG testimony to the panel quantified the operational impact: while PIT was offline, VHA had limited ability to collect more than $660,000,000 in revenue from veterans’ co‑payments or private insurers, and staff were reviewing tens of millions of community care claims. Dr. McDonald told members that in one year where the PIT data could not be run, about 40,000,000 community care claims were processed and the dollar volume of community care payments for that period was about $28,600,000,000.
Committee members pressed the VA to provide additional data. Ranking Member Ramirez asked for updated staffing and implementation figures related to EHRM, supply chain, scheduling and fraud detection systems; VA witnesses committed to providing information for the record.
The subcommittee also debated implementation risks. Ms. Duke said the VA supports the intent of the Strive Act and other bills that protect veterans from administrative billing errors but cautioned about potential "perverse incentives" and said VA would work to craft consistent policy and avoid unintended consequences.
Next steps: Members requested additional technical data from the VA before a markup scheduled later in June. The transcript shows committee members emphasizing the need to balance modernization with adequate staffing and pre‑deployment assessments so that veterans are not saddled with late bills after system failures.
