i'm concerned about what gao and mr. fryhas identified as what can go wrong when the procedures are not followed. mr. chairman, thank you for your indulgence. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. first of all, my deepest apologies. for the you and what i understand and you understand much more clearly is that verchs care is a zero sum proposition. if one veteran doesn't receive the care they're entitled to then it's a failure. your situation is unacceptable. the thing i would encourage you on is -- and i looked into this -- the tort issue. that's your recourse on this and they will always try and throw barriers up, both in the private sector and in the public.

mr. jan fry deputy assistant secretary, mr. randall williamson director of gao's health care team and mr. christopher labonte united states army veteran. i asked the witnesses to please stand and raise your right hand. do you solemnly swear under penalty of perjurey that the testimony you are about to provide is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. >> i do. >> mr. murray you are now recognized for five minutes. >> good afternoon, chairman kaufman, ranking member custer and members of the committee. thank you for the opportunity to discuss the department of veterans affairs care to veterans by contracting with community providers. mr. chairman, the subject of this hearing involves some complex territory related to procurement process, legal interpretations and the processing of hundreds of hows of purchased care transabs per year. i know we will be discussing these areas in detail, and that the committee's oversight is important. we will always depend on a mix of in house and community care with care in the comm

i'm concerned about what gao and mr. fry has identified as what can go wrong when the procedures are not followed. mr. chairman, thank you for your indulgence. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. first of all, my deepest apologies. for the you and what i understand and you understand much more clearly is that verchs care is a zero sum proposition. if one veteran doesn't receive the care they're entitled to then it's a failure. your situation is unacceptable. the thing i would encourage you on is -- and i looked into this -- the tort issue. that's your recourse on this and they will always try and throw barriers up, both in the private sector and in the public. >> the tort program it essentially investigates themselves. the attorney acts as their investigator. >> trust me people win these. what i'm saying is if this was wrong, there are people out there to assist you, there are veteran attorneys that are veterans themselves, that their job is to try and help make this right. >> so the va has a six-month head start to co

there obviously is otherwise mr. fry wouldn't have had the difficulty he's had. i would want to know, i would want to know what a far based system would mean to accessible care for veterans because the end game here is still providing high quality accessible and cost effective care for veterans. and so to solve the problem if it's determined that a far based system should be used here, the remedy should -- i would want to know how long will it take in this process for a person for a contract to be executed and what the process means and i want to know how it would affect the accessibility to care for veterans. also one thing we haven't mentioned yet is a whole idea what it would mean for the acquisition workforce. when we did our clinical contract care work we found that the contracting officers and the contracting officer representatives who do most of the leg work for the contracting officers are already stressed in terms of workload. if you increase that workload you double it ten fold whatever it would mean to get a far based system, then you know, what would

mr. fry wrote and i quote over the past five years some senior v.a. acquisition and finance officials have willfully violated the public trust while federal procurement and financial laws were debased. their overt actions and dereliction of duties combined have resulted in billions of taxpayers' dollars being spent without regard to federal laws and regulations making a mockery of federal statutes" -- end quote. an example of this violation is found with v.a. purchase cards. typically v.a. uses these cards for smaller purchases of up to $3,000 according to the rules and regulations and the laws. but they were inappropriately used to buy billions of dollars' worth of medical supplies without contracts or oversight. mr. fry continued in a quote again, "in addition doors are flung wide open for fraud waste and abuse when contracts are not executed. for example, by law prices are paid for goods or service subject to contracts can only be determined to be fair and reasonable by duly appointed cont

>> well, from some of the newspaper articles i read i assume your frying to mr. lilly's comments. >> mr. benton and mr. lilly. >> i can tell you, every development program, every product that any supplier makes there is always a spirited debate about the right components, the right design. and there are trade-offs. the previous materials we use extremely toxic the unwanted effect that when deployed is a did not burn cleanly and there was a lot of effluents put into the vehicle and a lot of people and respiratory issues were bothered. every propellant, every design, there is always a spirited debate and you can probably find people. >> i want to move on. given given that you are recalling cars that may have already been repaired, have there been field incidents reported? have you had any occurrences >> not that i'm aware of's. >> all of the replacement parts have performed 100 percent satisfactorily? >> well, what i said was i'm not aware. >> would you double check that and get back to us and let us no? >> yes. >> what does takata believe we know from testing toda

senate republicans oppose the extension and so voted last thursday -- i'm cork last sorry last fry friday, mr. president. is it any wonder that even the senate's own majority members felt the need to take it into their own hands. refused to allow the senate to extend the provision. but again the junior senator from kentucky didn't hide his thoughts. he came and was here on the floor for ten hours or so. i disagree with the junior senator from kentucky, but we're not in the mess today because of the junior senator from kentucky. woulder in the mess we are today because of the majority leader. the majority leader should have seen this coming. everyone else did. even those in his own party. meanwhile, the republican leader has repeatedly lectured this body as to how it should function but his actions have helped the senate not to function. we can do without more lectures and defiance statements. we can do for some more strategy planning, and open lines of communication. because the majority leader's job to have a plan must get done over what it would like to get done. in this case, my friend fro

>> well, from some of the newspaper articles i read i assume your frying to mr. lilly's comments. >> mr. benton and mr. lilly. >> i can tell you every development program, every product that any supplier makes there is always a spirited debate about the right components, the right design. and there are trade-offs. the previous materials we use extremely toxic the unwanted effect that when deployed is a did not burn cleanly and there was a lot of effluents put into the vehicle and a lot of people and respiratory issues were bothered. every propellant, every design there is always a spirited debate and you can probably find people. >> i want to move on. given given that you are recalling cars that may have already been repaired have there been field incidents reported? have you had any occurrences >> not that i'm aware of's. >> all of the replacement parts have performed 100 percent satisfactorily? >> well, what i said was i'm not aware. >> would you double check that and get back to us and let us no? >> yes. >> what does takata believe we know from testing today t

senate republicans oppose the extension and so voted last thursday -- i'm cork last sorry last fry friday, mr. president. is it any wonder that even the senate's own majority members felt the need to take it into their own hands. refused to allow the senate to extend the provision. but again the junior senator from kentucky didn't hide his thoughts. he came and was here on the floor for ten hours or so. i disagree with the junior senator from kentucky, but we're not in the mess today because of the junior senator from kentucky. woulder in the mess we are today because of the majority leader. the majority leader should have seen this coming. everyone else did. even those in his own party. meanwhile, the republican leader has repeatedly lectured this body as to how it should function but his actions have helped the senate not to function. we can do without more lectures and defiance statements. we can do for some more strategy planning, and open lines of communication. because the majority leader's job to have a plan must get done over what it would like to get done. in this case, my friend fro

mr. secretary, i found creative people there. these went deep fry cooks. okay? the first batch of mashed potatoes had butter buds and the new regulations were -- the new batch of potatoes under 30 milligrams of sodium. at some point you got to -- but all right. i understand what you're saying. maybe the chefs can come to our schools in indiana. going to the department of integrity that you speak of, interested in learning more about that. do you have all the teeth you need in law for -- >> i'm sorry, what? >> the department of integrity, do you have the teeth that you need in current law to make that department of integrity work? what do you envision it doing to make a difference? >> well, it's starting i think with taking a look at the application process and determining whether or not there's ways to prevent errors and mistakes on applications that inl crease the error rate. it's also working with software producers to develop an online application process that could potentially reduce errors as well. you know, obviously, if we're given more capacity and oppor