TREA WASHINGTON UPDATE FOR MARCH 12, 2010
Well this is the time of
the legislative year that many of us call March Madness. There are numerous
hearings in both the House of Representatives and the Senate; there are subject
matter summits; there are questions sent by staffers from the Hill and the
government Departments. And this is all before we even look at the push that is
going on by the Majority on Health Care. So it is quite a month. But for us in
your Washington Office the biggest news is WE HAVE MOVED! Last Saturday morning
we started the long planned relocation. Our new address is:
1001 N Fairfax Street Suite 102
1) TREA President Charlie Flowers To Testify Before Joint VA Hearing
2) Senate Passes Stop Gap Bill To Stop 21% Medicare Doctor Payment Rates
3) VA Announces Plan to Create “Fast Track” for New Agent Orange Claims
5) VA Secretary Shinseki Leading White House Delegation To The 2010 Paralympics
Winter Games
6) VA Joins In The Celebration of March as “Women’s History Month”
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Click here for a Printable Version of this Update
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1) TREA President Charlie Flowers To Testify Before Joint VA Hearing-On Thursday, March 18,
2010, TREA President Charlie Flowers will present TREA’s Veterans’ Legislative
Goals before a Joint Hearing of the House and Senate Committees of Veterans
Affairs. The hearing will be held at the Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 50
at 9:30 a.m.
2) Senate Passes Stop Gap Bill To Stop 21% Medicare Doctor Payment Rates-On
Wednesday, the Senate passed an “extender” bill and sent it back to the House of
Representatives for their consideration. The bill is a collection of limited
extension of programs and tax cuts. The Senate version of the
HR4213 blocks the cut in physicians
Medicare reimbursement rates through September 2010 (the beginning of the new
fiscal year). It also extends long term unemployment benefits (up to 99 weeks)
and health insurance supports and subsidies until December 31. It has financial
aid for states to pay for Medicaid costs and 1 year extensions of tax breaks
that lapsed last year, including those for research and development (R&D). It is
not clear what the House will do with this bill. The new Chairman of the House
Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Michigan) said that the House
will have to study some of the Senate bill’s offset. President Obama has
proposed using some of those offsets to help pay for his health care overhaul.
So we will keep you informed about the next step in this long and twisting road.
3) VA Announces Plan To Create “Fast Track” For New Agent Orange Claims-Last year the Department
of Veterans Affairs accepted 3 additional diseases as “presumptive” service
connected when there was exposure to Agent Orange. They are Parkinson’s disease,
ischemic heart disease and B-cell leukemia. This means that if a veteran who
served in Vietnam has one of these diseases there will be a presumption of
service connection and the veteran does not need to prove additional connection
between the medical condition and military service. It is expected that over
200,000 veterans will file new claims under this new ruling. This spring the
VA’s proposed regulations on how these claims will be handled as well as a
private sector contract to proposed methods that would speed up the adjudication
process. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Erik K. Shinseki said:
“This will be a new way of doing business and a major
step forward in how we process the presumptive claims we expect to receive over
the next two years. With the latest, fastest, and most reliable technology VA
hopes to migrate the manual processing of these claims to an automated process
that meets the needs of today’s Veterans in a more timely manner.” For more
information on Agent Orange please go to:
www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange.
4) TREA’s Washington Executive Director Testified Before Senate Armed Services
Committee’s Personnel Subcommittee Hearing-On
Wednesday, Deirdre Parke Holleman, Executive Director of TREA’s Washington
Office joined other VSO/MSO spokesmen to testify about the many military
legislative needs for this year. The hearing was the first one chaired by the
new Personnel Subcommittee Chairman Senator Jim Webb (D-Virginia). Also
attending was the Ranking Member of the subcommittee Senator Lindsey Graham
(R-North Carolina) as well as Subcommittee members Chambliss, Hagen and Begich.
The representatives from Fleet Reserve Association (FRA), National Military
Family Association (NMFA), Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the US
(EANGUS), the Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) and TREA testified
on the full Legislative personnel Goals of The Military Coalition. These include
issues for the active duty and their families, the National Guard and Reserves
and health care. TREA’s testimony covered all the retiree and survivor issues.
Among other items, I called for the complete end of the offset of military
retired pay by VA disability pay, the end of the SBP/DIC offset, to pass a bill
to allow the family of a late military retiree to keep his or her last full
month of retired pay, to correct the failings of the Uniformed Services Former
Spouse Protection Act and the desperate need for Congress to hold a hearing on
the subject.
5) VA Secretary Shinseki Leading White House Delegation to the 2010 Paralympics
Winter Games-Today,
March 12 through March 21, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada will be hosting
the 2010 Paralympics Winter Games. This weekend (March 12-14) VA Secretary
Shinseki will be heading the White House delegation through the opening events.
The American team has 50 athletes from 20 states; 5 of the athletes are military
veterans (3 of whom learned adaptive winter sports at VA’s National Disabled
Veterans Winter Sports Clinic.) The 5 veteran Paralymic athletes are:
Heath Calhoun
(Grundy, Va.), alpine
skiing - retired Army
The team will be competing in 5 winter sports: alpine skiing, biathlon,
cross-country skiing, sled hockey and wheelchair curling. The White House
delegation will meet with our athletes as well as other dignitaries and attend
official events including the Opening Ceremonies. The members of the White House
delegation are:
Eric K. Shinseki, secretary
of Veterans Affairs
To find out more
information on the Games go to
www.vancouver2010.com/paralympic-games or
www.usparalympics.org.
WASHINGTON – The Department of
Veterans Affairs joins with the nation to observe Women’s History Month in March
by recognizing and honoring women Veterans.
“Since the Revolutionary War,
America’s women have earned America’s gratitude and respect for their
contributions to the military and to the nation,” said Secretary of Veterans
Affairs Eric K Shinseki. “VA will continue to improve our benefits and services
for women Veterans as we transform into a 21st century organization.”
VA’s Center for Women Veterans
partnered with the National Foundation of Women’s Legislators to encourage
recognition of women Veterans through a “Her Story” campaign. With a March 11
kick-off, VA facilities will be encouraged to recognize and honor employees who
are women Veterans.
Projects benefitting women Veterans also figure into the Department’s priority
for using special funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
For example,
·
In Fayetteville, N.C., VA is upgrading the Women's Clinic to modernize the
women's pavilion into a patient-centered environment;
·
In Bath, N.Y., VA is renovating the Women's Health Center to accommodate a
women's health clinic; and
·
Portland, Ore., VA is creating a new women's clinic in the existing Primary Care
Clinic.
Women Veterans are being
encouraged to tell their stories through oral history to the Women in Military
Service for America (WIMSA) Memorial (http://www.womensmemorial.org/index.html) and the Library of Congress’ Veterans History
Project (http://www.loc.gov/vets/).
Women Veterans are eligible
for the same benefits as male Veterans. VA’s women Veterans health care program
managers are pursuing initiatives to enhance women’s health care with an overall
focus on:
·
Comprehensive primary health
care
·
Women’s health education
·
Reproductive health
·
Communications and
partnerships, and
·
Women’s health research.
In 2009, the Department
initiated a national plan for comprehensive primary care for women at all
facilities. VA also finished hiring 144 full-time women Veterans program
managers. More than $199 million was budgeted in 2010 for gender-specific health
care for women Veterans. In
addition, VA awarded the “Create Women’s Clinic” project using American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act funding. Under this project, an existing clinic will be
remodeled in 2010 and serve as model for other clinics across the country.
Women Veterans are one of the
fastest growing segments of the Veteran population. They comprise 7.5 percent of
the total Veteran population and nearly 5.9 percent of all Veterans who use VA
health care services.
VA estimates women Veterans
will constitute 10 percent of the Veteran population by 2020 and 9.5 percent of
VA patients.
“During this observance of
Women’s History Month, let’s remember the special contributions and sacrifices
of the ever-increasing number of women serving in the armed forces,” said
Assistant Secretary L. Tammy Duckworth. She noted women currently make up
approximately 14 percent of the active-duty military and 17 percent of Guard and
Reserves.
For more information about VA programs and services for women Veterans, please
visit:
www.va.gov/womenvet and
www.publichealth.va.gov/womenshealth.
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