Health Care

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I want to use this opportunity to say a few words about an amendment that will be voted on later this afternoon, and it is the Sanders-Dorgan Yellow Ribbon outreach amendment, No. 2601.

Every Member of the Senate knows that we have seen many thousands of soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan and they have come home with post-traumatic stress disorder in very large numbers. They have come home with traumatic brain injury, TBI, also at frightening numbers. The government, in a number of ways, has developed many programs to try to provide help and medical care for these brave soldiers and for their families.

In Vermont, a couple of years ago, we helped establish what I think is an excellent program that many other States around the country are beginning to look at, and the basic premise of the program we have established in Vermont is that while it is enormously important to make sure those who come home from Iraq and Afghanistan get the best services possible, we establish those health care services, those services don't mean anything unless the soldiers are able to take advantage of the services.

Given the nature of PTSD and TBI, that is sometimes, especially for the members of the Reserve and National Guard, very difficult. So you will have instances, especially in rural America, where people will come home from Iraq, they are going to be in emotional trouble, and there are going to be strains and stresses on their families, with their kids. They may be suffering from PTSD, but one of the symptoms of PTSD is you do not stand up and say: You know what, I have troubles and I need help. That is not what you do.

What we established in Vermont was an outreach program which was largely filled with the veterans from Iraq who would go out to the communities and drop in and sit down with soldiers and their wives face to face and just get a sense of how they are doing and through that personal visitation suggest to them that if there is a problem, they might want to take advantage of the services the VA is providing, which in my State are quite good, and to make them aware that it is not unusual, that they are not the only people who are dealing with PTSD or TBI. In truth, this outreach program has been quite successful.

Some years ago, the Congress established a Yellow Ribbon Program which is doing a good job, and the goal of that program is to educate people who come home from Iraq and Afghanistan about the services available to them. But we have not yet funded the kind of strong outreach effort that I believe we need where we are literally sending people out to National Guard families, especially maybe in rural areas, and making them understand that their problems are not unique, that there are services available to help them.

So outreach is the word here. We do it in Vermont in a very informal way, just person to person.

This amendment is $20 million, and the offset comes from the $126 billion in funds in title IX of the bill. It does not cut any one particular account. This $20 million represents a fraction of 1 percent of the entire title.

So the issue here is that we have a serious problem with PTSD and TBI. I think it is terribly important that we do everything we can on a personal level to reach out to the families to get them the services they need. But, once again, you can have the greatest service in the world--I know we are trying. The Department of Defense is trying its best--but those services don't mean anything if veterans don't access them. So the goal is to get people into the services.

I would very much appreciate support for the Sanders-Dorgan amendment which will be coming up in a while.

I yield the floor.

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