Veterans, as a class, are patriots and defenders of all our rights to enjoy and live in freedom.     The erosion of healthcare benefits and services to these men and women is a national disgrace.

Soldier's Helmet     As an advocate for and defender of veterans' rights to such benefits and of course, as a non-combat Vietnam veteran, having served on active duty some 10 years, I take on the responsibility of relaying and providing information on this website for my fellow brotherhood.     "Freedom is not free."

    Military personnel have served and defended in all regions of the world and all climate conditions and were exposed to diseases that those that did not wear are uniform overseas, like our president, find hard to appreciate.     Obviously, our president does not appreciate such sacrifices as he and the republican-led congress cut VA budgets and erode the benefits and services to same.     What is the current batch of patriots going to face when they are old and suffer from service-connected ills?     Shame on those that do not support anything, but the best medical care for such patriots.

    And, for die-hard Bush-lovers, see FY 2006 Update 03.

    DAV recently reported congressional legislation that was defeated

VA MANDATORY FUNDING UPDATE 01: On 5 OCT, Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) offered an amendment to H.R. 2863, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2006 which would have established a formula by which health care funding for veterans would be adjusted to account for changes in population and inflation. Senate amendment 1937 would have provided funds for VA medical care through a combination of discretionary and mandatory funds. Unlike the broken discretionary process, this would have provided a sufficient funding level in a timely manner. The amendment was defeated by a vote of 51 (50 Republicans + 1 Democrat) to 48 (5 Republicans + 42 Democrats + 1 Independent). A three-fifths majority vote (60) of the total Senate is required to waive the Budget Act. Subsequently, the chair upheld the point of order, and the amendment fell. The roll call vote is posted on the DAV web site www.dav.org or is available upon request to raoemo@mozcom.com along with letters to your Senators, based on how they voted. Delayed VA funding has become an annual event that affects all veterans under the VA program. Until those of us receiving VA medical care convince their legislators of the need for action on this issue we have only ourselves to blame for future funding deficiencies and reduced VA health care. Recommend you take a moment to communicate with , either thanking them for their favorable vote or expressing your disappointment in their unfavorable vote.
[Source: USDR Action Alert 6 OCT 05]

DAV Paper @ VA Budget Shortfalls

    "Shortfalls in the current fiscal year (FY) 2005 Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care budget are adversely affecting VA's ability to provide timely, quality health care for our nation’s veterans. After reductions from the $1.2 billion increase in medical care appropriations, VA received a net gain of $479 million, which was used towards the unbudgeted 2 percent additional cost-of-living allowance (COLA) for VA employees ordered by Congress. According to the VA, the health care increase was reduced by the 0.8 percent rescission, a decrease in collections, transfers and add-ons to other programs."

DAV NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR

    "I come before you today to present the views of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) and its Auxiliary on the President's fiscal year (FY) 2006 budget for veterans' programs. In addition to our assessment of the President's budget recommendations, I will also provide the Committee with our own budget and program recommendations as contained in The Independent Budget (IB). The IB is a budget and policy document that sets forth the collective views of the DAV, AMVETS, the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA), and the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW)."

Complete Testimony given ..
 
VA BUDGET 2006 UPDATE 03 :   The Bush administration has maneuvered new support in their effort to reduce the government’s veteran expense. In January, Republican leaders removed Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) as committee chairman for being too close to veterans groups, too supportive of expanding benefits and too dismissive of Bush administration plans to slow VA spending and impose fees on low-priority veterans.   His replacement Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind) says the medical and rehabilitation needs of a new generation of war veterans leave him more certain than ever that Congress erred in 1996 when it opened VA healthcare to any veteran willing to pay modest fees. A decade ago, in the wake of a Persian Gulf War that saw relatively few U.S. casualties, the VA went back to worrying about an aging patient population and under-used VA clinics and hospitals. Those concerns, along with wishful thinking about the VA billing employer-provided insurance plans for the cost of care, led Congress to open VA facilities to veterans neither poor nor disabled. Time has shown that to be a mistake. Today the VA has $3 billion in uncollected debt for healthcare rendered which insurance companies have not paid. With oversight responsibility now for the second largest department in government, Buyer said he has three short-term priorities:

-- Re-focus VA healthcare on its "core constituency" of service-disabled, indigent and special-needs veterans.

-- Develop a "seamless transition" process for veterans moving from active duty to VA care. So far more than 10,000 have been wound in Iraq and Afghanistan and as many as 100,000 could have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Buyer said. "The VA needs to prepare to receive them."

-- Improve VA rehabilitation and vocational training to ensure that even the most severely injured veterans return to rewarding lives.

To meet these priorities:

--He expects a new bipartisan Veterans’ Disability Benefits Commission to review whether Congress went too far on allowing concurrent receipt of miliFtary retirement and VA disability payments. Buyer said that as chairman of the House subcommittee on military personnel a few years ago, he found $25 million to lift the concurrent receipt ban only for 100%, combat-disabled retirees.   Little did he realize that his care and concern would be so enveloped by politics and the ban quickly lifted to benefit a few hundred thousands retirees, many having no combat-related disability.

-- He expects the commission to consider whether to change the way disability ratings are set or to tighten the definition of "service-connected" injuries or ailments.   There is something bothersome in the system where you can have a soldier blow out his knee from a roadside bomb and end up with a disability that’s the same as a guy who blew out his knee sliding into home plate at church league softball on Sunday.  He questions whether that type of disability system is just and fair.

-- He would not assure current veterans with disability ratings that they will be excluded from commission recommendations and believes everything should be on the table.

-- He wants considered offering lump-sum payments to veterans with disabilities rated 20% or less, as settlement of all future compensation claims. He feels part of the problem is there’s gamesmanship in the system whereby veterans consistently, over their lifetimes, keep re-applying for their ratings, trying to get bumped up higher and higher.

-- He feels veterans’ organizations that claim that all veterans earned the right to VA healthcare, and use what he sees as inflammatory rhetoric to knock proposals to raise fees on non-poor, non-disabled veterans, are abandoning values like duty and sacrifice under which veterans served.
[Source: Military Update Tom Phillpotts article 10 MAR 05 www.fra.org/mil-up]

VA BUDGET 2006 UPDATE 04 :  On 7 FEB 05 President Bush’s administration released its budget request for fiscal year 2006, which would add just $101 million more for VHA than last year’s appropriation. The amount would be an increase of less than half of one percent; far below the 12 to 14% the VA itself testified is necessary to offset inflation and the rising cost of health care. Because the proposed increase is so small and comes at a time of rapidly rising costs, the budget includes a number of maneuvers to alleviate the impact by placing some of the financial burden on veterans. For the third year in a row,   the Bush budget proposal included a plan to implement a $250 user fee for Category 7 and 8 veterans and to increase prescription co-payments from $7 to $15.  This year’s proposal also requires VA to identify and implement an additional $590 million worth of management efficiencies.   In plain language, implementing management efficiencies means VA must maintain the same level of productivity with half a billion fewer dollars.   User fees and co-payments are nothing more than an attempt to make veterans pay for health care they have already earned.   Every time such cost-transferal proposals have been made, the veterans’ organizations have voiced complete opposition. In response to these objections, both the Senate and the House of Representatives have always rejected the President’s proposals. However,   the setting has changed with new House and Senate Veterans Affairs committee chairmen Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind).   He has already stated his support to focus resources on fewer veterans.   A medical system that only treats the sickest of the sick and the poorest of the poor is not sustainable and would be undesirable.   In the end, it would seriously erode the quality of care for today’s and tomorrow’s veterans.   The Bush proposal portends other dismal changes.   VA indicates that it will call for a staff reduction of 3,712 employees in medical care.  Federal funding for state-run veteran homes that provide long-term care will be eliminated, and reduced budgets for VA-run nursing homes will require the elimination of approximately 5,000 beds. Although the budget plan would not push out any veterans currently residing in nursing homes, VA officials said that the cut to long-term care reflects an 18% increase in “non-institutional” care funding because veterans increasingly are choosing home care. DAV and other organizations encourage every member, and anyone concerned about the reduction of veterans’ benefits, especially during a time of war, to contact their elected officials and express outrage that the men and women who have fought for our country cannot know with certainty that a reliable VA health care system will be available in the future to obtain benefits and health care.

The House and Senate each moved one step closer towards finalizing the 2006 fiscal year Budget Resolution when they approved their separate versions of the budget. Negotiators from the House and Senate must now come together to work on one final version of the bill. The House bill, which was approved on a 218-214 vote, still falls short of veteran organization’s goal of a $3.4 billion increase in veterans’ health care. However, it does not include either the proposed $250 yearly enrollment fee or the increased prescription drug copayment.   The Senate version passed by a narrow 51-49 vote and also rejects the prescription drug increase and the enrollment fee.   It increases spending for veterans health care by $1.2 billion over last year’s funding level, thanks to an amendment by Senators John Ensign (R-NV) *** and Larry Craig which increased funding. Four Senators voted against that amendment. To see the vote on the Senate’s amendment and bill refer to :   click here.     At roll call can be seen the House bill vote. The next step for the budget is a conference committee. Members of the House and Senate will come together over the next several weeks to iron out the differences between the two versions, before settling on a single version, which must then be approved, once again, by both the House and Senate.
[Source: DAV Legislative Bulletin FEB 05 & VFW Washington Weekly 18 MAR 05]

*** Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, knows what sacrifice soldiers and marines are making in our current Iraqi conflict;   having spoken of a young 19-year old marine that was Las Vegas first casualty in the war at his church and funeral.

Editorial Opinion :   It is outrageous and truly not patriotic to cut the budget of the health care system created after World War I to provide for all classes of veterans, service-connected and non either claimed or declared.

VA FEE PRESCRIPTION PLAN :   Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., thinks veterans would be willing to pay for the opportunity to have prescriptions filled at VA medical facilities. Specter, former chairman of the Senate Veteran’s Affairs Committee proposes to allow Medicare-eligible veterans who are not otherwise eligible for VA health care and services to have prescriptions filled at VA pharmacies for a fee, the size of which is not yet determined. The idea is to expand the number of people who are benefiting from big drug discounts the VA has been able to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies. The average cost of drugs through the VA is 50% less than the average in national chain drugstores. The bill S.614 to create the new benefit was introduced on 14 MAR. Specter said he does not want the VA to incur any expenses for filling additional prescriptions because in a time of flat budgets, this would detract from care and services for disabled veterans. That is why he proposes to charge for filling prescriptions for veterans who are not eligible for VA care, through an enrollment fee, a copayment or even a straight charge for each prescription. VA is in a better position to decide how to charge for the drugs, as long as the end result is that veterans would get a break on the prices they would pay at a chain drug store.   Those who would first benefit from this program are WW II and Korean War veterans who answered their country’s call over 50 years ago.   Specter pointed out that as they age, many desperately need relief from high drug price. He made a similar proposal two years ago, and it ended up being adopted in JUN 04 by the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee on a 10-5 vote.   The bill, however, never advanced to the Senate floor, in part because of opposition from drug manufacturers who could lose money under the plan.
[Source: NavyTimes staff writer Rick Maze article 15 MAR 05]


Fiscal Year 2006 Budget
www.dav.org/voters/fiscal_year_2006_budget.html
Reprint of above article :

DISABLED AMERICAN VETERANS
Building Better Lives for America's Disabled Veterans
_______________________________________________________
The Erosion of Veterans? Benefits and Services
May 2005

    Congress was unable to enact fiscal year (FY) 2003 appropriations before the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1, 2002. After the series of continuing resolutions that began in September 2002 and continued into February 2003 to keep the government running, Congress enacted a single bill consolidating the 11 remaining FY 2003 appropriations bills, and the President signed it into law on February 20, well into the second quarter of the fiscal year. Until its enactment, VA was funded at the FY 2002 spending level.

    As we entered March 2003, war with Iraq was all but imminent. While the politicians were making patriotic speeches and offering high praise for America?s military, some were preparing their own assault on veterans? programs. On March 12, 2003, the House Budget Committee debated its budget resolution for FY 2004. To lower government spending to accommodate the loss of revenue from the President?s proposed $726 billion tax cut, which the Congressional Budget Office projected would result in $1.8 trillion in budget deficits over the next 10 years, Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) presented a draft resolution that included increases in spending on defense and homeland security but called for across-the-board cuts in all domestic spending other than Social Security and unemployment programs. Under the Nussle plan, veterans? programs would have been cut approximately $25 billion over the next 10 years. To carry out these cuts, the Veterans? Affairs Committee would be required to make changes in the laws to reduce or eliminate programs. During 14 hours of debate on the resolution, the Budget Committee, voting strictly along party lines, defeated by a vote of 22 to 19 an amendment offered by Representative Darlene Hooley (D-Oreg.) to restore funding to veterans? programs. Again by a vote strictly along party lines, the Committee defeated by a vote of 22 to 17 an amendment offered by Representative Chet Edwards (D-Tex.) that would have included funding to pay for legislation to authorize concurrent receipt of military retired pay and disability compensation. With cuts in veterans? programs included, 24 members of the Budget Committee voted for the resolution, and 19 voted against it. The Committee therefore reported the resolution on March 17 for a vote by the entire House. This disheartening betrayal of America?s veterans on the eve of the war with Iraq, and a major veterans grassroots campaign to defeat it, set the stage for the dramatic showdown that followed between the congressional leadership and veterans? supporters in Congress.

    Then, House Veterans? Affairs Committee Chairman Chris Smith (R-N.J.) along with Michael Bilirakis (R-Fla.), Rob Simmons (R-Conn.), Charles W. ?Chip? Pickering, Jr. (R-Miss.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.), and Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) refused to bend to strong coercion by the House leadership to vote for the resolution with cuts in veterans? programs included. Without their votes, the House leadership could not muster a majority, and the Nussle budget plan, with the tax cuts, was doomed. Against extreme pressure from their own leadership and the Budget Committee Chairman, Representative Smith, and this handful of lawmakers forced a concession from Budget Committee Chairman Nussle not to cut veterans? programs. Under House rules, the budget resolution could not be amended at that point, but it faced certain defeat on the House floor if the demands of these holdouts were not met. Chairman Nussle committed, in exchange for their votes, to accept the Senate?s budget for veterans? programs when the Senate and House met in conference to work out the differences between their two versions of the resolution. The Senate budget resolution made no cuts in veterans? mandatory programs or discretionary programs and called for $1.8 billion above the President?s budget request for discretionary spending, primarily funding veterans? medical care. With the votes of these six holdouts, the House passed its budget resolution on March 21, 2003, by a narrow margin of 215 to 212 with the language calling for the cuts still included but with the promise of the House Budget Committee Chairman to abide by the Senate provisions rather than those in the resolution just passed by the House. The first battles of the war with Iraq had just begun the day before.

    Again for fiscal year 2004, Congress was unable to timely pass an appropriations bill. Finally, in late January 2004, Congress passed an appropriations bill containing funding for VA.

    After decades of inaction and sidestepping the issue of concurrent receipt of military retired pay and disability compensation, the House leadership came under ever-increasing pressure to enact legislation to authorize it in late 2003. The leadership was not to come forward with meaningful legislation without first trying to find a way to make veterans themselves pay for the costs of concurrent receipt by taking the money from them elsewhere. The leadership brazenly schemed to rip at the heart of veterans? benefits, the disability compensation program. Under current law, veterans are compensated for disabilities incurred or aggravated during military service unless due to misconduct, alcohol or drug abuse, or incurred during an unauthorized absence. Members of the Armed Forces serve under extraordinary physical and mental stress; serve in jungles, deserts, and other extremes of climate; serve in third-world countries where tropical diseases are endemic; and are exposed to all manner of dangers and hazardous substances. The military environment subjects servicemembers to stresses and trauma not common in civilian occupations. Therefore disabilities that arise or are aggravated during service are presumed to have been incurred ?in the line of duty? under the law.

    The ill-advised plan of the House leadership was to change the law to authorize service connection only for disabilities proven to have been directly caused by performing the activities of a servicemember?s particular military occupation. Injuries sustained during mealtimes and off-duty hours, for example, would not be service connected. Mental disorders and diseases would not be service connected unless the member could prove that performing his or her military job functions, and nothing else, caused the mental disorder or disease. Disabilities from the stress of the general military environment or military activities not strictly a part of a member?s military occupation would not be service connected. Infectious diseases incurred during service could not be service connected unless the member could prove the infection was incurred while performing activities of his or her military occupation. For example, a member who contracted malaria while serving in a remote jungle location could not be awarded service connection unless the member could prove the mosquito bite occurred while performing job functions, as opposed to while resting, eating, or sleeping. VA projected that approximately two-thirds of the veterans who have service-connected disabilities under current law would not be eligible under these proposed more restrictive criteria.

    The veterans? community, and the DAV in particular, reacted strongly to this unconscionable scheme. To say the House leadership stirred up a hornet?s nest would be a gross understatement. Veterans were deeply angered at this willingness of some in Congress to abandon our Nation?s most fundamental obligation, to care for those disabled in the service of their country, to let our sons and daughters serve in the Armed Forces at their own risk.

    We issued an extremely critical news release, with the headline ?Congress Declares War Against Disabled Veterans.? We communicated our shock and displeasure to every member of the House, and mounted an urgent grassroots campaign. Congressman Lane Evans (D-Ill.), Ranking Member of the House Veterans? Affairs Committee, followed with a news release condemning the move. Then Senate Veterans? Affairs Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) hurriedly convened a special committee hearing to receive testimony on the ramifications of such a change in eligibility criteria for service connection. We testified before the Senate Veterans? Affairs Committee on September 23, 2003. Witnesses and Committee members alike made strong statements against this House action. Ranking member, Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), raised emphatic objections to the procedural irregularities through which this change was being pursued and to the substantive provisions of the change itself. Senator Specter similarly voiced serious concerns. Immediately after the hearing, Senator Specter met with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and other key members of the of the Senate leadership, where he communicated the depth and unity of the opposition to this unacceptable scheme. We understand that the Senate leadership decided promptly not to support this move by the House. Press reports observed that this House plan ?met with near universal disdain.?

    The proponents of this scheme quietly abandoned it, and the House Armed Services Committee began working on a compromise proposal that would not authorize full concurrent receipt for disabled military retirees, as passed by the Senate, but would begin a phase-out of the offset between retired pay and compensation for combat disabilities and veterans with the more severe levels of service-connected disabilities. As perhaps a stubborn refusal to accept total defeat and a remnant of the desire to eliminate compensation for many disabled veterans, the plan devised by the House Armed Services Committee leadership, included provisions for a new commission to investigate the justification for the disability benefits veterans receive.

    On October 16, 2003, as U.S. casualties continued to mount in Iraq and Afghanistan, the House leadership publicly announced a plan through which the offset between retired pay and compensation would be phased out over 10 years to provide full retirement and disability benefits for military retirees rated 50% or more disabled by service-connected disabilities. Veterans rated less than 50% would receive special compensation for combat-related disabilities in addition to the disability compensation paid. The plan included provisions for a 13-member Veterans? Disability Benefits Commission to study the appropriateness of disability and death benefits for service-related conditions, including the ?appropriate standard or standards for determining whether a disability or death should be compensated.?

    One year later, by section 666 of Public Law 108-375, which was enacted on October 28, 2004, Congress directed a study of disability benefits for current and past members of the Armed Forces with service-connected disabilities. The substance of this study, to be conducted by the Department of Defense, is similar to the issues to be addressed by the Veterans? Disability Benefits Commission. Additionally, the bill calls for a Government Accountability Office study of benefits payable under federal, state, and local laws to government employees for work-related disabilities incurred in the performance of their jobs. The study is to pay attention to tasks performed by government employees with risks similar to the performance of military duties. By the end of October 2004, more than 16,000 sick and injured U.S. troops had been evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan.

    In January 2005, the House leadership removed Representative Chris Smith as Chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee. Chairman Smith?s removal, two years before his six-year term limit, was the direct result of Chairman Smith?s strong advocacy on behalf of our nation?s veterans and his refusal to allow his colleagues in Congress to forget our government?s commitment to sick and disabled veterans. The House leadership also passed over Representative Bilirakis, Vice-Chairman of the Committee and a strong veterans? advocate, for the less senior Congressman from Indiana, Steve Buyer, who has been a strong proponent of reducing the number of veterans who are eligible for VA health care.

    On Tuesday, April 19, 2005, Senators Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), along with VA Secretary James Nicholson and a representative of the Department of Defense, announced the introduction of legislation to provide certain military members who suffer traumatic injuries to receive a lump sum payment for their disability. To pay for this new benefit, servicemembers will be charged a monthly premium. This is the first time that our government has sought to charge military members for a new benefit related to a service-connected injury. The intended purpose of this legislation is to relieve the financial hardship experienced by servicemembers, who are receiving care and rehabilitation services at military medical facilities, and their families who want to be near their injured relative. While DAV supports the need for a ?family hardship allowance,? we do not support charging the military member for this new benefit. DAV believes this is an abrogation of our government?s responsibility ?to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.?

    DAV is also greatly concerned that this legislation had been put on a fast track, without benefit of congressional hearings or even substantive public discussion of the issues involved. There are also some rather disturbing inequities and potential unintended consequences that will or can develop as a result of the passage of this legislation.

    Our government should bear that burden and not require servicemembers to indemnify themselves against getting hurt. Further, some disabilities that would be catastrophic would not even be covered. The legislation undermines the very foundation of how we historically have cared for those who wage our battles and places the burden squarely on the warrior.