Health Care

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I want to begin by thanking my colleague and friend from Connecticut, Senator Murphy, for the very eloquent and powerful remarks he has just made, showing America the Connecticut experience with health care, which shows that the Affordable Care Act is working and is expanding opportunities for health care across the country. Once the myths are exploded, once the truth is told, Americans will appreciate how fortunate we are to have this reform in the way that health care is insured and delivered for the American people.

There are bumps in the road, as Senator Murphy has just said. There will continue to be issues to be overcome in achieving success. But the enormous potential to make America healthier, to eliminate the anxiety and anguish Americans experience in seeking a quality of life that health care affords, is an opportunity and obligation we cannot shirk. I am proud to join with him in speaking this truth and clarifying for people across the country the great promise of this program.

A lot of the promise still has to be fulfilled. A lot of the realization about that promise has to be educated. But we will succeed in that effort. I thank him and my other colleagues who are joining us in seeking to make America realize the great potential and promise that we have, and already the great accomplishments that have been made.

Connecticut stands as a model for both the promise and the accomplishment in the 130,000 people who have already enrolled in the benefits for young people now permitted to stay on their parents' policies, and, indeed, the elimination of preexisting conditions as an obstacle to insurance.

I know about many of these issues and obstacles from my time as attorney general when I fought insurance companies that denied basic opportunities and failed to fulfill their obligation and impose these kinds of obstacles. Now, hopefully, insurers will be a partner in this effort, and so will the medical community and business community across the country.

So I look forward to continuing this effort and thank him for the exposition he has given, and my other colleagues who will join us later today.

I want to focus on a group that particularly needs health care in this country, and that is our veterans. We are here to talk about the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014--a measure that seeks to address comprehensively the challenges our veterans face today.

There are more and more veterans. We are losing some of the ``greatest generation.'' In fact, we are losing them tragically and unfortunately every day. But the next greatest generation needs the same benefits and services we have given to the ``greatest generation.'' The next greatest generation is serving right now and has served recently in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.

We must be unwavering in our commitment to our veterans. We must determine that this big and broad bill is necessary to keep faith with them and to make sure we meet the diverse and urgent needs they present.

We all talk in this body about our commitment to veterans. But all too often, our Nation has failed to keep faith. I have learned that we all have expressed here our admiration and commitment to our Nation's veterans. I have introduced, as have many of my colleagues, veterans bills based on input from my constituents. In fact, my very first piece of legislation as a Senator was the Honoring All Veterans Act.

But the reality is this comprehensive approach is necessary. I thank Senator Sanders as chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee for recognizing that the needs of our veterans are interlocking, multifaceted, and manifold in the kinds of problems that are raised as they leave the military and enter the civilian world.

Sometimes it is their medical records that cannot be transferred seamlessly from the Department of Defense to Veterans Affairs and Veterans' Administration facilities. Sometimes it is the failure to make their military skills transferable in credentials and licensing. And sometimes it is medical conditions, health care needs for post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury, that make their wounds invisible, make them difficult to discern to the ordinary eye but are there deeply and enduringly unless they are treated properly. That is why health care for them is so important and why this bill expands opportunity for health care so dramatically.

The health care needs of our veterans must be met through the provisions of this bill that expand health care opportunities and services. When I first came to the Senate, I thought--and I think reasonably--that a veteran needing health care could simply go to a VA hospital to receive it. But that is really not the case. On January 17, 2003, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced that it would ``temporarily'' suspend enrolling Priority Group 8 veterans. That temporary restriction stands today. So under existing restrictions, a veteran making as little as $33,577 or a family of five making a household income of $50,025 can be denied health benefits in Connecticut. There are an estimated 720,000 Priority Group 8 veterans who are not enrolled in health care. Tens of thousands of veterans apply each year for enrollment and are denied due to that means test.

Simply put, the VA should have the capacity and resources to serve every veteran. That is why section 301 of this bill would allow veterans who lack that access, who do not have a service-connected disability, and who do not have affordable health insurance, to enroll in the VA's health care system.

There are other health care provisions: section 305, which expands the provision of chiropractic care; sections 331, 332, and 333, which expand complementary and alternative medicine. Anybody who has not yet seen ``Escape Fire'' should view it to understand the stark ways that veterans have challenges in access to alternative treatments and why drug addiction and abuse can become such a problem. And there is section 334, expanding wellness programs. All of these programs are vital, as well as the expanded access to treatment for post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury, which, in my view, are at the core of the need for this legislation.

Section 342 would require the VA to contract with outside providers to establish a program of supportive services to family members and caregivers of veterans suffering from mental illness. All of these invisible conditions have such dramatic consequences in the employability of veterans and their ability to give back and continue to contribute to this Nation, as so many of them wish to do.

The needs of our veterans are also pressing in disability claims. The need to end the backlog is, again, one of the areas addressed directly in this bill. The backlog of disability claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs has become a chronic problem. The VA is making progress. There is no question that the numbers are better today than they were. But there are still veterans such as Army veteran Jordan Massa in Connecticut, who served in Afghanistan, and Marine veteran David Alexander, who was deployed in Iraq, who had to wait too long and suffered as a result. We need to keep faith with those veterans.

I understand and I applaud Secretary Shinseki, who has committed to tackling this problem. But some 389,000 claims are still backlogged. In Connecticut, about 48 percent of the claims are backlogged, meaning that 48 percent of claims made by our veterans take more than 125 days to be resolved. Each of these veterans has an individual story, a record of service, a record of suffering. Be it in today's wars or conflicts past, a record of service and sacrifice is exemplified by every one of them. These individuals may now be looking for employment, perhaps, to support a family. We need to keep faith with them.

This legislation aims to decrease the backlog further through an accelerated appeals process and getting the VA the information it needs to decide these claims. It brings in local governments to help with the claims. And it helps veterans who have misfiled documents in the claims process to seek a better route to what they need and deserve.

The bill also would require regular reports to Congress on efforts to eliminate the backlog. Accountability is so critical--accountability on backlogs, on all of the issues that underlie the failure to process these claims as quickly as they should be. And the backlog must be eliminated.

Employment programs are also addressed in this bill. So are the traumatic effects of sexual assault. The bill is multifaceted and comprehensive, as it should be. To address the diverse and urgent needs, it must be big and broad because the needs and challenges of our veterans are big and broad.

The reality is that 1 million men and women will leave the military over the next 5 years. One million patriotic and brave men and women will be separating from our Armed Forces. Becoming veterans, they will need services and benefits that they have earned, and they will need them at the time they leave, not at some distant point in the future. We owe it to them now to keep faith.

I have submitted amendments that would address some of the other issues.

For example, the need to recognize that post-traumatic stress is not only a condition that afflicts our current military men and women and veterans but also past veterans, even though it was undiagnosed and untreated at the time. Changing their status so as to recognize post-traumatic stress for the veterans of past wars is a need that we need to address.

I will make sure those veterans of past wars, whether it is Vietnam or Korea or any of those conflicts in our history, receive a second look at their discharge. That is the purpose of the amendment. That is the purpose of legal action that has been brought by the Yale veterans clinic. I will continue to support it.

We can go further as well to enhance our veterans' health by including the Toxic Exposure Research and Military Family Support Act in this measure. I have an amendment that will do so. Many veterans were exposed to toxic chemicals such as Agent Orange and their needs are only beginning to be addressed.

In addition to the harmful effects to those individuals, there are also impacts on their children. For many years those who were exposed to Agent Orange were told there was no evidence that their symptoms resulted from that. Now that we have evidence Agent Orange is toxic, we need to include the longer term effects on their children and their families. The amendment I have offered would address those issues.

Even if none of those amendments I have proposed are adopted during this process, this measure stands on its own as a historic step forward. It is, indeed, a historic recognition of the obligation and opportunity we have at this point in our history to make sure we leave no veterans behind and keep faith with our veterans, address their needs in a big and broad bill that reflects the urgent and diverse issues and challenges they face. I am proud to support it.

I thank my colleagues on the Veterans' Affairs Committee who have approved many of the parts of this bill by unanimous vote or overwhelming bipartisan majorities. This cause should be truly bipartisan. Let's move forward and move America forward addressing the needs and challenges of its veterans as we have an obligation to do. We must keep faith with our veterans and leave no veterans behind.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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