OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Veterans Cemetery Benefit Correction Act

Floor Speech

By: Neal Dunn
By: Neal Dunn
Date: May 16, 2018
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Veterans Health and Health Care

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Mr. DUNN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the VA MISSION Act of 2018. This important legislation secures veterans' ability to access quality healthcare and ensures that we are fulfilling our promise to care for them following their service to our Nation.

It builds on the success of the Choice Program by streamlining community care programs so a veteran can access care from a provider outside of the VA when they need to. It also expands caregiver benefits for seriously injured pre-9/11 veterans and for their families.

The VA MISSION Act includes two healthcare initiatives from legislation that I have introduced that protects our veterans receiving organ transplants and also helps with the opioid crisis.

Currently, there are only 13 facilities in the Nation where a veteran may receive a transplant in the VA healthcare system, and none of these facilities performs all types of transplants. Timely organ transplants are often the difference between life and death.

The transplant language from my bill included in the VA MISSION Act eliminates the roadblocks that veterans face and increases the access to care for our veterans, the care that they have earned by their service to our Nation.

We are also fighting the opioid epidemic among veterans. My legislative initiative increases transparency in opioid prescribing at the VA by allowing doctors to identify high users of controlled drugs who are therefore at risk for addiction. My language in the VA MISSION Act instructs the VA to do what most private doctors already do: connect to the prescription drug monitoring databases nationwide so that no one slips through the cracks.

Mr. Speaker, we are standing up and fighting for those who fought for our freedoms. As a surgeon and a veteran, I believe the VA MISSION Act is good medicine and good public policy.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support this important legislation.

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