'My God, We Gotta Open Our Eyes': Tommy Tuberville Urges Adoption Of AI To Investigate Fraud At VA

2 days ago

During a Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs hearing prior to the congressional recess, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) spoke about adopting AI models to investigate potential fraud at the VA.

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00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for being here today. Largest health care system in

00:07the world. My God, what a job y'all got, right? You know, when I first got here, first thing

00:16we did in this committee, we rehired 4,000 people that the Trump administration had fired

00:21because of cause. What did we do? We hired them back and gave them back pay. You know,

00:26this is about the veterans. I mean, this is not about the dang workers. Now, we cherish

00:31our workers, but it's the same thing here. My job is to help people, and the same thing

00:37as yours. So I'm a proud co-sponsor of Chairman Moran's Restore the Accountability Act. We

00:44got to have good people, and I know it's hard to hire people. It's really hard. I've dealt

00:49with it all my life, but we have to take care of our veterans. We could pass a trillion

00:54dollar bill today, trillion dollars, and give it to the VA. It'd be gone in a matter

00:59of time, and it would not help anything. It's not about money. It's about the right efforts

01:06of doing the right thing for our veterans. I've got 500,000 veterans in my state of Alabama,

01:12and it's growing. We've got good VAs. We've got some that are not so good, but thanks

01:19for trying to do this. But again, we've got to get good people in there, and I understand

01:22what we're trying to do. The VA's inspector general recently highlighted several failures

01:27within the fiduciary program, such as millions of dollars of benefits being dispersed without

01:32oversight. Unfortunately, bad actors have found their ways to take advantage of veterans,

01:39and we have to combat fraud. I don't understand why, with all this AI now, that we don't have

01:44companies that can come in and stop a lot of this fraud. Mr. Engelbaum, do you agree

01:49with that?

01:50Yes, Senator. I think one of the things that we're doing in our review is looking at what

01:56technology and what systems that we can actually put in place and actually reinvest to improve

02:01services to our veterans, to improve accountability. We are hampered by some of the systems that

02:07we have. In the limited time I have been with the VA, I've been talking to our employees

02:12and our folks about what they actually need to do the mission effectively. That is a big

02:16focus of what we need to do. We're not trying to recreate the past. We're trying to prepare

02:21for the future. Part of that is refocusing our efforts, as you just rightly said, on

02:27our veteran, getting the systems that we need, and getting our focus right on that mission.

02:32I'd hope that we would look into a lot of these companies. I've had people come to me

02:36and say, Coach, we have a program right now that could save the VA $20 to $30 billion

02:44a month, but nobody will talk to us. We need to open up our eyes to this and talk to people

02:50that can help organize what the VA is doing and quit doing what we did 50 years ago. This

02:56is the 21st century. My God, we've got to open our eyes. I would hope that we would

03:03be more competent on looking at the things of the future. Again, anything that we can

03:09do to help our veterans. Are there ways that we can improve in competency in determining

03:18the process of all this fraud that's coming in that you've seen so far? I know you haven't

03:23been there long.

03:24Yes, sir. I can also reflect, but very quickly from my perspective, absolutely. We really

03:33need it. It's about focus. It's about getting our organization focused on the mission, streamlining

03:38it, and making sure that we're laser focused on what we need to do and what systems we

03:43need to do and the veterans. Look, I love the VA. I love our employees. I came out of

03:48retirement because I'm passionate about serving our veterans and improving their veterans'

03:51care, but we need to do better, and we can. When we talk about employees, this is a failure

03:58of us as leaders to make sure that we organize properly, we are focused, and then we drive

04:05the mission to accomplish what we set out to do. Kevin, did you have some comments on

04:09that?

04:10Yes, sir. As it relates to the incompetence decision, part of what that IG report identified

04:15311 individuals who didn't have the right coverage or right oversight. That was because

04:21we did just that. We migrated from an old legacy system to VVMS where we have more insight,

04:27we have better control of the data. In that migration, some of the records were lost because

04:33of bad data in the old system. We did review all 311 cases. We found no circumstances where

04:38anybody had been taken advantage of or where their funds had been misused or where there

04:43was any indication of fraud.

04:45Thank you. Mr. Engelbaum, if I'd send you the names of these companies that are calling

04:51me consistently, would you follow up on that in terms of fraud, of trying to get us in

04:58the 21st century of this AI that we should be using every day, especially in the VA?

05:04Absolutely, sir. I'd be happy to do that. Thank you.

'My God, We Gotta Open Our Eyes': Tommy Tuberville Urges Adoption Of AI To Investigate Fraud At VA

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