It took a joint letter from Senate Veterans Committee Chairman Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) and ranking member Larry Craig (R-Idaho) to get DOD bureaucrats to renew Veterans Affairs physician access to a key military patient database, according to a Feb. 16 statement from Akaka and Craig. The Pentagon set up joint access last September for the Joint Patient Tracking Application, and then suspended access several weeks ago as DOD and VA haggled over further sharing of patient information. Craig called the affair “a bureaucratic legal snafu.”
Members of the House Armed Services Committee say the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile program has been set back three months due to the ongoing government shutdown. The comment is noteworthy because the JATM's status has been kept tightly under wraps.
