America's Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, just a month ago, I was on the Senate floor talking about the struggles of a number of Kansas veterans as they attempted to utilize the Veterans Choice Program that Congress passed nearly 2 years ago. That program is being implemented by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. We looked for many opportunities to try to provide better service, more efficient service, more timely service to our veterans, and Congress ultimately came together and passed the Veterans Choice Act.

As I indicated a month ago and numerous times on the Senate floor, that legislation, that law says if you are a veteran who can't receive the medical services you are entitled to, you have the opportunity to receive those services at a medical facility, a clinic, a physician, or a hospital at home. As an individual Senator who comes from a State as rural as most and more rural than many--and certainly as rural as the Presiding Officer's home State and the home State of the Senator from Missouri--we have a real interest in trying to make certain our veterans who live long distances from a VA hospital can access that medical care.

I thought we took great satisfaction in the passage of that legislation. I certainly did. What we have discovered since then in its implementation has been one handicap, one hurdle, one bureaucratic difficulty, and one challenge after another. While maybe it is difficult for the Department of Veterans Affairs to implement this legislation, they are the ones who ought to suffer the challenges of doing so, not the men and women who served our country.

During my conversation on the Senate floor a month ago, I talked about a number of veterans in Kansas and called them by name. One of those veterans was Michael Dabney, a Kansas veteran from Hill City, KS, in northwest Kansas, in the part of the State that I grew up in.

A piece of good news is that Mr. Dabney is eligible for the Veterans Choice Program because he lives more than 40 miles from a VA facility. So Mr. Dabney qualifies under that Veterans Choice Program, and Mr. Dabney needed surgery and elected to use the Veterans Choice Program. There is a community-based outpatient clinic hosted by the VA in Hays, which is about an hour away from his hometown. He was receiving care and treatment there. The indication was he needed the surgery, and they suggested that he travel to Wichita--another couple hundred miles--for that surgery. But Mr. Dabney suffers from PTSD and indicated that he didn't feel comfortable and capable of traveling that extra 200 miles to receive the surgery.

His primary care provider at the outpatient clinic in Hays indicated to him this: Well, you live more than 40 miles from a facility. You qualify for the Veterans Choice Act. You can have these services provided and this surgery provided at home.

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