VA Emergency Care

Floor Speech

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, on Monday I introduced a bill, S. 1588, with Senators Moran, Isakson, and Begich to provide an emergency safety net to roughly 144,000 veterans waiting for VA care. I thank my colleagues for their support. This bill fixes a catch-22 in current law that puts veterans who have recently returned from overseas at financial risk if they experience a medical emergency.

Under current law, a veteran enrolled in the VA system who receives emergency care at a non-VA facility can be reimbursed for those costs only if the veteran had also received care at a VA facility in the preceding 24 months. The intent of this requirement is to encourage veterans to seek preventative care, which decreases the need for more expensive emergency care. The problem is thousands of veterans have recently come home from overseas and they can't meet the 24-month requirement through no fault of their own. These veterans have scheduled their first new patient examination with VA, but they have not yet received their examination because of VA waiting times.

In other words, they haven't received their first VA appointment because of VA waiting times, but if they need to go to a non-VA hospital for a medical emergency VA cannot reimburse them because they haven't received their first VA appointment.

VA estimates 144,000 veterans are caught in this catch-22. With the war in Afghanistan ending, even more veterans will be affected. This is why veteran service organizations such as the lraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America are supporting this measure.

This bill gives VA the flexibility to reimburse veterans who have not yet received their new patient examination if the veterans have to go to a non-VA hospital for a medical emergency. For Hawaii veterans in rural Oahu or the neighbor islands who live far from VA facilities, emergency care outside the VA may be their only option. Just last week I met a veteran from Waianae who had a medical emergency while waiting 4 months for his first appointment at VA. Veterans such as he who were denied VA reimbursement would get much needed relief under this legislation.

In its FY2014 budget request, VA asked for the statutory authority provided by this legislation. The VA has already budgeted for this new authority in its FY2014 budget request, and the funding provided in H.R. 2216, as reported by the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 27, 2013, is sufficient to cover any additional costs VA will incur using this new authority.

I urge my colleagues to cosponsor this commonsense legislation. We owe it to our brave men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line for our country that the VA has the tools it needs to better serve new veterans accessing the care they have earned.

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