veterans-healthcare

Veterans Bill Passes With Interesting

By: Stephanie Kalota 
Founder, Veteran Legislative Voice & AHG Correspondent

On November 19th, the House of Representatives passed the Senator Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act (H.R. 8371). It did pass with a bipartisan vote, something that is increasingly rare these days. This bill makes “veterans who are eligible for VA care are covered for non-VA care at home if it doesn’t cost more than that provided by the VA.”

Per the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), “A compromise was reached on a provision that would make final decisions to refer to private care made by a veteran and a doctor based on the best medical interest of the patient. AFGE is concerned that taking away the VA’s ability to review these decisions will lead to inappropriate use of private care.  In response to these concerns, the compromise sunsets this provision after two years, which will allow Congress to evaluate its impact on the integrity of the direct care system before making a permanent change that could undermine [the] VA’s ability to provide quality, integrated care veterans only receive at the VA.”

The bill was also missing, something that was formerly part of it, called the EHR Program RESET Act. That act would have extended Congressional oversight of the VA’s computer software program, which currently expires in 2025. There have been long-standing issues with the VA’s software rollout called Electronic Health Record (EHR), which “experienced 826 “major performance incidents” — including outages, performance degradations and incomplete functionality.” Also, from the Federal News Network, “In a survey, most respondents told the IG’s office that the new EHR contributed to a decrease in staff morale and increases in stress and burnout.”

Per the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), “A compromise was reached on a provision that would make final decisions to refer to private care made by a veteran and a doctor based on the best medical interest of the patient. AFGE is concerned that taking away the VA’s ability to review these decisions will lead to inappropriate use of private care.  In response to these concerns, the compromise sunsets this provision after two years, which will allow Congress to evaluate its impact on the integrity of the direct care system before making a permanent change that could undermine [the] VA’s ability to provide quality, integrated care veterans only receive at the VA.”

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A Review of Congressional Bills for Military and Veterans

By: Stephanie Kalota 
Founder, Veteran Legislative Voice & AHG Correspondent

This congressional session, 118th, has proven to have one of the lowest rates of passed bills in general. It also has one of the fewest passed bills for the military and veterans. 

Two important ones are the Veteran Improvement Commercial Drivers License Act of 2023 (S.656) and the Dustoff Crews of the Vietnam War Congressional Gold Medal Act (S. 2825). The first one was introduced by Republican Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska and was signed into law on October 1st. It amended the United States Code to eliminate red tape that excludes veterans from accessing commercial driver-education programs using their GI Bill benefits. Both the Commercial Vehicle Training Association and the American Trucking Association applaud the passage of this bill. The second bill was introduced by Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas and was signed into law on September 26th.  This bill awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the United States Army Dustoff crews of the Vietnam War, collectively, in recognition of their extraordinary heroism and life-saving actions in Vietnam.

Two bills have passed by both chambers of Congress but have yet to be signed by President Joe Biden, and they are the Veterans’ Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2024 (H.R. 7777) and Restoring Benefits to Defrauded Veterans Act (H.R. 4190). You may be thinking, what the hell? Well, both of these bills are still being held by the Senate while both chambers are in recess until they return after the general election. The first bill was introduced by Republican House Representative Morgan Luttrell of Texas, and it is the annual bill to increase the rates of veterans benefits like VA Disability and death indemnity compensation for survivors of certain disabled veterans, effective December 1st. The second bill was introduced by Democrat House Representative David Trone of Maryland, and it is to amend the United States Code to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to repay the estates of deceased beneficiaries for certain benefits paid by the Secretary and misused by fiduciaries of such beneficiaries. Under the current law, there isn’t a hierarchy of reissued benefits among a recipient’s survivors if the intended recipient dies before the VA makes the payment. Under the bill, the reissued benefits would be paid according to the same hierarchy used for distributing other accrued VA benefits to survivors of deceased beneficiaries.

While some bills are passed by one chamber in Congress, the one to highlight and end this piece would be the Stuck on Hold Act (H.R. 6656). This bill was introduced by Republican Representative Ken Calvert of California, and it would direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs and the Commissioner of Social Security to implement automated systems with callback functionality for each customer service telephone line of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration, respectively, and for other purposes. No cost estimate has been posted in the system. It is supposed to require the VA to (1) inform any caller to a covered line about the anticipated wait time, if any; and (2) automatically offer a callback to any such caller with an anticipated wait time of more than 10 minutes. Any veteran who has been going through the VA’s telephone system, knows that this is an important one to get passed because just one bad phone call experience can set off the wrong fuse. 

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Challenges to Voters’ Registration and Ballots, including Those of the Military and their Dependents

By: Stephanie Kalota 
Founder, Veteran Legislative Voice & AHG Correspondent

It all started when former President Donald Trump, who is also currently running as the Republican Presidential Candidate, was interviewed by Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief, John Micklethwait. He was asked, “Should Google be broken up?” Trump replied, “I just haven’t gotten over something the Justice Department did yesterday, where Virginia cleaned up its voter rolls and got rid of thousands and thousands of bad votes, and the Justice Department sued them.” You can view the full Bloomberg interview here.

This stirred more attention to something already progressing for this upcoming election. Former President Trump was referring to the Justice Department filing a suit against the state of Virginia for violating a federal law prohibition on removing voters within 90 days of an election, otherwise called the Quiet Period Provision. This was in response to Republican Virginia Governor Glen Youngkin’s executive order that was signed on August 7th.

This executive order was to ensure that there were no non-citizens on the registered voters’ list so that personnel flagged in a cross-reference from the State Department of Motor Vehicles would have 14 days to prove their citizenship. This led U.S. citizens to believe that their voter registration was canceled less than 90 days before the general election, which is specifically against the Quiet Period Provision of the NVRA. Virginia hasn’t been the only place that this occurred, this has also happened in Alabama, with similar results. Among these actions, Republican House Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida has even introduced a bill “that will allow states to purge noncitizens from their voter rolls at any time.” The frustrating part is that these actions fuel the conspiracy that there are issues with non-citizens voting in the general election, while this is not actually what is truly going on. For more reference, please check out this article.

But this isn’t the only thing that is screwing up the voting for the upcoming general election. Recently, suits have been filed in PA, Michigan, and North Carolina to challenge overseas votes, something that many military families often use when it comes to elections. Per ABC News, “In both suits, the [Republican National Committee] officials allege that the state’s election officials have not created a secure system to verify that an overseas voter is an American and have specifically called out provisions in their election laws that permit spouses or dependents of military or overseas voters to vote in elections based on the residency of the military or overseas voter. “As a result, certain people who have never resided in Michigan (or perhaps anywhere else in this country) are registering to vote and voting in Michigan elections,” the plaintiffs in the Michigan case claim in their filing.

This isn’t coming only from the Republican National Committee alone, former President Trump has “claimed without evidence that anyone living overseas can get a ballot mailed to them, even if they are not eligible to vote, falsely accusing Democrats of subverting a 1986 law to win in November.” So why is he targeting the military? From the 2016 exit polls (from the New York Times) to the 2020 election polls by the Military Times and Syracuse University, Trump lost almost 10 points. Within the same 2020 Military Times Survey, 50% of the active-duty military answered that they had an unfavorable or very unfavorable view of President Trump. So by the political pundits, it is assumed that former President Trump is trying to target those ballots that would be a vote against him.