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The Administration's most recent budget request for VA funding was almost $4 billion short of the amount recommended in the Independent Budget, which is jointly prepared by AMVETS, DAV, PVA, and VFW, and endorsed by over 60 other veterans and medical organizations. Every year, veterans' organizations are forced to fight for an adequate VA health care budget and the VA appropriation is often held up in Congress. Without dependable funding, the VA cannot adequately plan or invest for the future, and at times must ration care. Hundreds of thousands of veterans are waiting months for benefits processing, tens of thousands more are waiting for their first VA doctor's appointment, and the backlog is increasing as new veterans seek care.
IAVA Recommends:
Better Treatment:
- Timely and sufficient funding of VA health care, with a baseline budget as recommended in the FY 2008 Independent Budget.[i] Mandatory funding, adjusted annually for inflation and demand, would be the simplest procedure to ensure veterans get the health care they deserve.
- $500 million allocated for research initiatives studying the hallmark injuries of the current wars: mental health disorders, brain and spinal injuries, and amputations.
Better Access:
- An expansion of the Benefits Delivery and Discharge Program to all troops, including a complete medical examination within 90 days of finishing a combat tour. This examination must include a physical examination for undiagnosed blast injuries; a mandatory and confidential counseling session with a mental health professional; and, for those leaving the service, a mandatory information session with the VA representative on site about VA benefits and mental health services.
- Better data-sharing between the DOD and the VA, including transferable, bidirectional and interoperable electronic medical records and an electronic DD-214.
- A GAO study into the costs and benefits of restructuring the VA claims process, either by fast-tracking OEF/OIF veterans to a single center with highly experienced staff, dramatically increasing the staff at Vet Centers to help process claims, or adopting a system modeled on the IRS system, in which all claims are automatically approved, with a percentage of claims audited to prevent fraud.[ii]
- An outreach plan to inform Reserve Component troops that they are eligible for TRICARE, and a study of National Guardsmen and Reservists' local access to care.
- A study to examine and make recommendations to improve the access of women to VA health services, and particularly mental health care.
Quarterly reports from the VA Secretary to Congress with updates on the claims backlog, the number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking care, the average wait-time for a first appointment at a VA hospital, and the appropriation of the mental health earmark.
[i] The FY 2008 Budget will be released in early 2007 at:
http://es1.pva.org/independentbudget/index.htm.
[ii] As suggested by Linda Bilmes of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, in "Soldiers Returning from Iraq and Afghanistan: The Long-term Costs of Providing Veterans Medical Care and Disability Benefits" p. 18.
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