Veterans

Our country continues to face some difficult economic issues coupled with record national debt and deficits.  There are some difficult choices that will need to be made, but in making those decisions we must keep our military strong, our country safe and our veterans secure.  Over the past few years, our budgets have reflected those commitments.
 
Since 2007, Congress has increased spending on veterans’ health care and services by $23 billion – increasing VA discretionary funding by 60 percent.
 
With the needed funding and push from Congress, the VA has launched an aggressive campaign to attack the claims backlog problem on multiple fronts, and has set an ambitious objective:  By 2015, with a 98-percent accuracy decision rate in place, and a veteran will not wait more than 125 days for a decision on a claim. 
 
To achieve these objectives, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) expanded its workforce by over 3,500 people, began accepting on-line applications for initial disability benefits, initiated an innovation competition, launched over 30 pilot programs and initiatives to identify best practices, and invested over $138 million in a paperless Veterans Benefits Management System that will be deployed in Fiscal Year 2012. 
 
Veterans are already directly benefitting from this effort, for example, through a pilot program establishing “express lanes” for simple claim actions and quick benefits payments done on a walk-in basis.   Additionally, VBA has awarded a $9 million contract to “fast track” Veterans’ claims for service-connected illnesses associated with Agent Orange herbicide exposure during the Vietnam War.

Congress provided an additional $30 million in funding to increase the number of Community Based Outpatient Clinics for the more than 3.2 million veterans living in rural areas who do not have ready access to VA hospitals.

As we look ahead, the VA continues to make progress on providing veterans with the efficiency and convenience of electronic health records.  In fact, the VA’s Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record initiative has already made great progress.  In September 2009, VA exchanged data with Kaiser Permanente in San Diego as part of its first pilot program. 

In March 2010, VA and DoD began a pilot program in area of Southeastern Virginia, and three additional pilots are planned for 2012. This is expected to lead to national deployment of a fully capable nationwide system throughout VA and DoD.

These are just a few of the ways we are working to live up to our commitments to our veterans.  This is so important because our veterans are the very essence of America, and their values and sacrifice have sustained us as a people and as a nation.