TREA Washington Update for February 22, 2008

It is quiet in Washington DC this week. Congress is out of session and the President is in Africa. Everyone has been focused on Wisconsin, Hawaii, Washington State, and outer space this week. Next week everyone is back; the fight over the surveillance bill resumes and all is back to normal

1) Focus on Improvements in VA Benefits Adjudication

2) DoD and VA Announce Plan to Establish A New Joint Health Care Web Portal

3) Navy Successfully Destroys Disabled Spy Satellite

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1) Focus on Improvements in VA Benefits Adjudication-A major push has been started by many VSOs, like TREA, to convince Congress and the VA to focus on personnel, training and IT improvements to improve the speed and accuracy of VA’s adjudication of compensation and pension claims. The VBA backlog has continued to grow and grow reaching an 816,211 claim backlog by January 2008. (That is an increase of 188,781 since 2004.)

The VA’s proposed IT budget is an 18% increase from last year’s request-focused primarily on creating an electronic health record (another important goal). Please see below. VA requested an overall 2009 IT budget of $2.53 billion in 2009, up from $2.15 billion in fiscal 2008 VA Secretary Dr. James Peake has said that the development of the ability to create and share information from an electronic health record will also help improve the speed and accuracy of claims processing.

2) DoD and VA Announce Plan To Establish A New Joint Health Care Web Portal-Last week Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England and Veterans Affairs Deputy Secretary Gordon Mansfield told the House Armed Services Committee of a plan to create a joint Health Care portal to help supported wounded and ill service members. This is in response to the Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded (the Dole-Shalala Commission) recommendation to development of a single portal that would improve the ease to get access to health and benefits information from the two departments. They intend to base the new “eBenefits Web Portal”) on the VA’s present MyHealtheVet.

This is part of the larger goal to develop an interoperable electronic health record for both Departments. While testifying before the Senate’s Veterans Affairs Committee, VA Secretary Dr. James Peake, said: "The availability of medical data to support the care of patients shared by VA and DOD will enhance our ability to provide world-class care to veterans and active duty members, including our wounded warriors returning from Afghanistan and Iraq." It is clear that such a capacity will be a great help for all members of the active duty, their families, retirees, veterans and survivors.

3) Navy Successfully Destroys Disabled Spy Satellite-A Navy cruiser, the USS Erie successfully fired a SM-3 missile and destroyed a satellite that was careening to earth with a tank containing 1,000 pounds of hydrazine fuel. The satellite, at the time it was hit was traveling at more that 17,000 miles an hour. The success on the first attempt has worried countries including China and Russia who claim to see it as a test of an anti-satellite weapon (And a successful one) To see a briefing of the mission go to www.defenselink.mil or www.livelink.com

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House Armed Services Committee

Ike Skelton, Chairman            http://armedservices.house.gov

Washington, DC --House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton released the following statement following the destruction of a malfunctioning U.S. government satellite:

“Our forces and technical experts are to be commended for destroying this malfunctioning satellite before it posed any threat to people on the ground. This was an exceptional case, and I reiterate that this action should not be construed as standard U.S. policy for dealing with problem satellites.

We abandoned the pursuit of anti-satellite technology two decades ago due to concerns about the consequences of its use, and our country has no plans to renew those efforts. Congress will closely monitor U.S. policies concerning our space assets in the coming days.”

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