The VA Hospital that Cost $1.7 Billion to Build…So Far

Allgov.com A new veterans’ hospital in Colorado is on track to become one of the most expensive medical centers in the world with a price tag so far of $1.7 billion. Like so many other things associated with the Department of Veterans Affairs, the hospital in Aurora has been plagued by bad decisions that are proving very costly. The facility was originally budgeted at $328 million. The VA says it will now need another $830 million to finish the project, which is going to take another five years. The Washington Post reported that some of the reasons the project has gotten so out of hand are hospital doors that were supposed to cost $100 each, but instead cost $1,400 apiece and a design more focused on form than function. “There’s a $100-million-and-still-rising price tag for an atrium and concourse with curving blond-wood walls and towering glass windows,” Emily Wax-Thibodeaux wrote at the Post. “And entire rooms that had to be refashioned because requests for medical equipment changed at the last minute and in other cases the equipment didn’t fit. No one had bothered to measure.”...