EVANS, NATIONAL VETERANS’ ORGANIZATIONS LEAD CHARGE
FOR MANDATORY FUNDING OF VETERANS’ HEALTH CARE

Washington, D.C. -- The Nation’s veterans’ service organizations today joined with Illinois Congressman Lane Evans to press for mandatory funding of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system, which has been plagued by chronically deficient budgets resulting in hundreds of thousands of veterans being forced to wait for care and one group being denied access to VA care altogether.

Congressional cosponsors of Evans’ legislation and veterans’ organizations representing approximately 6 million veterans gathered at a morning news conference to urge that veterans who seek VA health care be given the same consideration as other federal health programs whose funding is mandatory, including Medicare, the Department of Defense’s Tricare for Life and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.

“Our veterans – those returning from Iraq, those who scaled the cliffs above the beaches of Normandy, those who walked point in the jungles of Vietnam, those who survived the brutality of Korea and other battlefields, all who honorably served – have earned the assurance that VA, their system, will be there when they need it,” said Evans. “Under the current funding process, they not only are being told they’ll have to stand in line for weeks and even months, many veterans are having the door shut in their faces altogether. That not only is wrong, it is dangerous. What does it say to the next generation of service personnel, and the one after that?” he cautioned.

Evans, the Ranking Democratic Member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, has introduced H.R. 2318, “The Assured Funding for Veterans Health Care Act of 2003,” which would require the Secretary of the Treasury annually to provide funding for VA care based on the number of enrollees in the system and medical inflation. The legislation, which now has more than 80 House cosponsors, is in line with recommendations of the President’s Task Force (PTF) to Improve Health Care Delivery for Our Nation’s Veterans. The task force cites a “growing mismatch between funding and demand” in its recently released report and recommends “full funding to ensure that enrolled veterans in Priority Groups 1 through 7 (new) are provided the current comprehensive benefit in accordance with VA’s established access standards.”

Evans calls the PTF conclusions in regard to mandatory funding “nearly perfect, save for one significant omission . . . Priority 8 veterans are deserving too.” Priority Group 8 veterans are those with incomes above the geographically adjusted Housing and Urban Development threshold for low-income housing -- $24,644 in some communities – and who do not have compensable service-connected conditions. The Task Force report emphasized the need to clarify and address the standing of Priority 8 veterans, calling their current status “unacceptable,” but left it to the Administration and the Congress to do so. A dissenting opinion filed by some members of the President’s Task Force seeks to guarantee access to VA care for Priority 8 veterans.

“Lack of adequate resources led VA to deny enrollment to these veterans earlier this year,” said Evans, “that is, deny access to medical treatment to a group that includes decorated combat veterans whose low incomes might preclude the purchase of private insurance and whose Medicare benefits don’t transport to VA. I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds this offensive.”

VA’s budget has not kept pace with either medical costs or the needs of a dramatically increasing patient population that has risen from 2.9 million veterans in 1996 to nearly 5 million veterans expected to use VA health care services this year. As of January 2003, more than 236,000 enrolled veterans were on wait lists of more than six months for a first appointment or an initial follow-up for health care. An unknown is how many veterans were (and are) being told they must wait to even schedule an appointment.

The President’s Task Force notes that mandatory funding “would most likely eliminate one of the major impediments to providing access: unpredictable or subjectively developed budget requests.”