WASHINGTON — U.S. Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) today expressed their frustration and concern with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) recommendations to the Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission to close or downsize several VA health care facilities in South Dakota.
“The VA’s recommendations to the AIR Commission should seek to expand and improve access to health care. Instead, the VA has issued proposals that would reduce access to health care and impose serious hardships on rural and tribal veterans,” the delegation wrote. “Removing services from the Hot Springs and Fort Meade facilities, and consolidating health care services in Rapid City and Sioux Falls, would substantially reduce high-quality care options for those veterans who have benefited from access to rural VA services in South Dakota.”
The delegation also issued statements after the Biden administration notified the VA facilities in Hot Springs, Fort Meade, and Wagner that its proposed recommendations, which are part of a multi-year nationwide review of VA health care infrastructure, include plans for them to close or be downsized. The delegation’s decade-long fight to save the Hot Springs VA culminated in October 2020 when then-VA Secretary Robert Wilkie notified them that the VA had formally rescinded its earlier record of decision to realign the VA Black Hills Health Care System, which would have significantly reduced services at the Hot Springs VA Medical Center.
