Lawmakers Receive Warm Welcome from Veterans at War Museum
Senator Lindsey Graham, smiling from his recent primary win, thanked veterans for their support and promised relief from the problems in the VA health care system. He was accompanied by Fourth District Congressman Trey Gowdy.
“The South Carolina veterans community has had my back for many years,” Sen. Graham told a group of veterans in Greenville, Monday. “I’ve tried to have your back all of these years, because I know that without you, there is no election.”
Graham noted that “only one percent of Americans serve in uniform and the 99 percent depend on the one percent.”
Moving to the VA problems, the Senator said that: “How we treat veterans is a referendum on who we are as a people. My goal is to take the VA system, turn it upside down and make it better serve the veteran,” Graham concluded.
Both the Senate and House have passed bills designed to fix the VA. The Senate version is called the “Veterans’ Access to Care Through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014.”
Graham will work to get the Senate to cooperate with the House and will urge the House to reconcile differences with the Senate in order to get the bill passed and signed into law as soon as possible. The bill is to cover a two-year period and will cost between $35 and $50 billion a year.
The bill will establish a commission on access to care to examine how best to organize the Veterans Health Administration, locate resources, and deliver health care to veterans.
The bill would allow veterans to seek care from outside health care providers for a two year period if:
The individual is unable to get an appointment within VA’s current waiting time goals.
They may also use outside providers if the veteran resides more than 40 miles from the nearest VA facility.
The pending legislation would also “expedite removal or demotion of senior executives who are failing veterans.”
Finally, the bill will deal with the fallout from a self-imposed social experiment and “increase access to care for military sexual-assault survivors.”
Earmarked projects specifically for South Carolina include $8 million for a new Community Based Outpatient Clinic lease in Myrtle Beach to consolidate and expand services.
The bill also provides $7 million to lease a facility to accommodate a Primary Care/Dental Clinical Annex within five miles of the VAMC Charleston. The Senate bill authorizes the leasing of a total of 27 new VA medical facilities. Senator Jeff Sessions opposed the bill because of excessive spending. He was joined by Senators Bob Corker and Ron Johnson.
Congressman Gowdy said most provisions of the bill are “appropriate and past due.”
