Blake Hall
The Choice Program was put in place to alleviate the dilemma many veterans were facing: waiting months and months for medical treatment at a VA facility because they weren’t close enough to one.
Under this new process, veterans who lived too far away were now able to get out-of-network care, making the link between location and receiving quality healthcare irrelevant.
There was one problem though.
To be eligible for the program, you have to live 40 “as-the-crow-flies” miles away from a VA facility. Meaning, it didn’t take into account roads and the reality of getting from one location to the next with a vehicle.
That all changed with Jon Stewart ripping into the program and its “as-the-crow-flies” rule on Monday (as you can see in the clip above) and you know what?
It worked.
On Tuesday, the Department of Veterans Affairs changed the rule and will now use actual driven miles based on Google Maps rather than the route a proverbial crow would take should it be a military veteran and need care at a VA facility.