Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Calls on President Obama to Authorize Fee Basis Care for Vets

Statement

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02) today announced that she has sent a letter to President Obama urging him to use his executive power to allow veterans to immediately access private medical care outside of the Veterans Affairs (VA) system without VA pre-approval and bureaucratic red tape.

"What the President and the VA have done so far to deal with this crisis is insufficient because it still leaves the health and well-being of our veterans in the hands of a broken system," said Representative Tulsi Gabbard.

"Many of our veterans urgently need medical care and they should not have to go another day without it." A veteran who has served two tours of duty in the Middle East, Gabbard said, "I have seen the wounds, both visible and invisible, of veterans I served with. To make any veteran wait for medical care is not only an emergency, it is a travesty.

"President Obama and Congress have the power to ensure that our veterans do not wait another week for care. They can't afford to wait for a new head of the VA or for the systemic problems of the VA to be fixed. Nor should they. We must take action immediately, and to this effect I have sent the enclosed letter to President Obama. I am calling on him to use his executive powers to immediately allow veterans to use their VA identification cards to obtain medical care through the private health system.

"Furthermore, I plan to introduce legislation that will give our veterans the right to obtain private medical care using their VA cards over the next 12 months, at which point we can re-evaluate whether the VA problems have sufficiently been fixed.

"The time for action is now. People can talk as much as they want about how much they care for our veterans, but without action, it's simply empty rhetoric."

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