WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Bill Delahunt today praised House passage of legislation last night that includes provisions to strengthen veterans benefits and improve medical care for veterans that live in Massachusetts and nationwide. 

“As men and women continue to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, is it our responsibility in Congress to make sure that they have the care that they need and deserve,” said Delahunt. “This legislation will raise combat pay, provide far greater benefits to reservists, prohibit increases to TRICARE, and take steps towards ending the Disabled Veterans Tax and the Military Families Tax. I urge President Bush to sign this important bill into law.”

The FY’08 Defense Authorization Act Conference Report was passed yesterday by the House of Representatives by a vote of 370 to 49.  It includes provisions to restore our military’s readiness, provides needed equipment to soldiers in the field, improves transparency in military contracting, increases veterans benefits, and addresses the care of injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“On the South Shore, Cape Cod, and the Islands, I have heard from many veterans concerned about timely access to VA healthcare,” Delahunt said. “This bill will address the current discrepancies between DOD and VA disability evaluations which have resulted in frustrating delays. It will also expand VA health insurance for service members who have served in combat by continuing coverage for up 5 years after discharge due to complaints that conditions like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) may take years to diagnose.”

Statewide the number of veterans is estimated to be 476,000, with 77,194 residing in the 10th District. This legislation also includes an important provision that will amend the Family Medical Leave Act to provide six months of unpaid, job-protected leave to the spouse, parent, child, or next of kin of service members who suffer from a service-connected injury or illness.  This is one of several provisions contained within the Wounded Warrior Act, passed by the Congress earlier this year which seeks to implement the recommendations of the Dole-Shalala Commission to improve medical care for wounded service members as they transition back to civilian life.

Specifically this legislation would:

Give the Military a Pay Raise   - Provides all service members a pay raise of 3.5 percent -- 0.5 percent more than the President’s budget request -- increases monthly hardship duty pay to a maximum of $1,500 (up from $150 per month), and provides special pays and bonuses.

Upgrade Military Health Care for Our Troops, Veterans & Military Retirees

• Preserves health benefits by prohibiting fee increases in TRICARE and the TRICARE pharmacy program for service members and retirees.
• Prohibits cuts in military medical personnel and fully funds the Defense Health program facility maintenance, particularly at Walter Reed.
• Extends VA health insurance for service members who served in combat in the Persian Gulf War or future hostilities—5 years after discharge instead of 2 years.  PTSD may have delayed onset.

Provide Better Benefits for Reservists

• Allows Reservists, who serve on active duty, to use their enhanced educational benefits for up to 10 years after leaving the reserves (currently they must be used immediately) and to be paid on an accelerated basis.  It also allows Reservists with three cumulative years of active duty service to qualify for education benefits at 80 percent of the active duty rate. (Currently, they are required to serve two years continuous active duty to get this benefit.)
• Reduces the age at which a Reservist can draw retirement below the age of 60 by 3 months for every aggregate 90 days of active duty service in most military operations.
• Reimburse up to $300 for travel expenses for reserve training.
• Establishes a national combat veteran reintegration program to help reservists reintegrate into their families and communities through family services and post-deployment screening.

Strengthen Other Benefits for the Troops and Their Families

• Family medical leave for families of soldiers wounded in combat. Provides 6 months of unpaid, job-protected leave to the spouse, parent, child, or next of kin of service members (including members of the reserve) who suffer from a service-connected injury or illness.
• Takes several steps toward ending the Disabled Veterans Tax – which forces disabled military retirees to give up one dollar of their pension for every dollar of disability pay they receive.  It expands the special compensation for combat-related disabled retirees to cover all who are medically retired for combat disabilities.  (Under current law, they must have served 20 years.)  It also speeds up the end of the disabled veterans tax for veterans who are 100 percent disabled, making that effective January 1, 2005 instead of October 1, 2009.  This legislation is essential for the more than 28,000 injured personnel who are returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, many of whom are amputees or have combat-related injuries and must be medically retired.
• Makes progress in ending the Military Families Tax, which unfairly penalizes the more than 60,000 survivors, most of them widows, of those who have died as a result of their service-connected injuries. Currently, these widows lose their survivor benefits if they also receive Dependency and Indemnity Compensation benefits (because their spouse died of a service-connected injury), but this measure establishes a special survivor indemnity allowance of $50 per month to begin to address this tax – increasing to $100 by 2014.

Wounded Warrior Act

• Takes essential steps to respond to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal by improving the care of injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan – addressing many of the issues raised by the Dole-Shalala Commission and implementing several of its recommendations.  The measure:
• improves outpatient medical care for wounded service members at military health care facilities;
• begins restoring integrity and efficiency to disability evaluations and cutting bureaucratic red-tape; and
• improves the transition of wounded service members from the Armed Forces to the VA system. 
• Creates the Wounded Warrior Resource Center to serve as the single point of contact for service members, their families, and caregivers to report issues with facilities, obtain health care, and receive benefits information;
• Requires semi-annual inspections of housing facilities for recovering service members;
• Requires the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to jointly develop a comprehensive policy on the care and management of members of the armed forces, including the development of fully interoperable electronic health records;
• Mandates the establishment of new standards for: processing disability evaluations to reduce discrepancies between the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, training for disability evaluation personnel, rating disabilities that take into account  all medical conditions, as well as requiring a pilot program for improving the disability evaluation system;
• Mandates the establishment of new standards for processing medical evaluations, training and qualifying those performing the evaluations, and assigning independent medical advisors to assist recovering service members and families;
• Requires a comprehensive policy to address traumatic brain injury (TBI), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), other mental health conditions, establishing DOD Centers of Excellence on PTSD and TBI to improve treatment, research, training and rehabilitation, requiring enrollment and registry of TBI patients to ensure continuity of care, guaranteeing veterans  a VA mental health assessment within 30 days of request, expanding hiring to address shortage in mental health professionals, and strengthening DOD training for better detection of PTSD.; and
• Requires a DOD study of the support services provided to families of recovering service members, and a National Academy of Sciences study on the physical and mental health needs of those deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

This legislation will now head to President Bush for his signature or veto.

For a fact sheet with stats on Massachusetts veterans, please click here.

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