I completely agree with Scott that this is not new. Medavie Blue Cross is a third party, so they've had third party contractors for quite a while. As Scott said, they're not service providers. They don't do the medical treatment and things like that.
As to the number of providers they're going to use, from what I have learned, they're not going to be telling somebody that they can't go to that doctor anymore, but have to go to this one. They're still going to be allowed to go to the providers they have now.
I wanted to highlight one thing, though. The disability claims and the backlog are a separate department from case management withing Veterans Affairs, so there's no overlapping responsibilities in that way.