HOT SPRINGS, S.D. — South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds says the hospitals at Fort Meade and Hot Springs Veterans Affairs will remain open.
The V.A. announced in March a proposal to close the hospitals there and turn them into clinics.
The proposal came from the Veterans Administration’s Asset and Infrastructure Review Committee, or AIR.
Rounds, along with several other senators, said hearings to seat the members of that committee would not be held, thus no commission would be established and the process as outlined by the V.A. MISSION Act would not move forward.
“We will, as a group, not allow for the nomination process to move forward for the individuals who would have been nominated by the president to create that commission,” Sen. Rounds says. “If the commission is not going to be established, they can’t make a recommendation.”
Rounds says the Commission is not necessary for our continued push to invest in VA health infrastructure.
Rounds made the announcement in Hot Springs Monday, where Mayor Bob Nelson says the town, since its inception, has always been about America’s veterans. He was relieved by today’s news.
The MISSION Act of 2018 required the Department of Veterans Affairs to conduct an Asset and Infrastructure Review, or AIR, among other things. The AIR Commission would be a panel of nine experts approved by the U.S. Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee (and then voted on by the full Senate) to evaluate and review facilities and services nationwide.
