Veterans Health Care

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I wish to begin by thanking a number of my colleagues, most especially our good friends who are very active Members of this body, Senators Sanders and McCain, for acting in a very bipartisan and courageous way to enable us to reach a compromise and vote on a truly historic step forward--as we did recently--to begin to bring an end to this crisis in our health care system and the VA.

I also thank my colleague from Rhode Island for his amendment, and I hope it has some support in some form--as it and other amendments deserve as well--because as commendable as the bill is, it certainly does not solve all of the problems in the VA health care system, let alone the VA.

Let's recognize that the disability claims backlog persists. The bureaucratic rigmarole and sclerotic bureaucracy of the VA in many parts of the country continue to plague our veterans, and we need to recognize that top to bottom the VA needs an overhaul in its culture as well as its management. But this bill represents a good faith and effective way to respond initially--the beginning of a solution to a health care crisis that is decades long in the building. The delays in the VA health care system are well known and longstanding.

I spend a lot of time, as a member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee as well the Armed Services Committee, listening to veterans. I have a veterans advisory council that gives me extraordinarily insightful and important advice. I make a point of visiting the VA health care facilities all around Connecticut, and I spend a lot of time in places where veterans gather, such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, and others. Listening to them is a major source of information for me in forming my judgment about what should be done with the VA health care system. What I hear from them--most commonly--is that the health care is good, but it takes too long to get it. The doctors, nurses, and health care providers do very good work, but it takes too long to see them. The delays are what our veterans find most troubling about this system.

What we have seen--disclosed first by CNN and then by others--is not only delays but false record keeping to disguise those delays and falsification of documents and lists to hide a failure to meet deadlines--in fact, to provide timely care. That kind of falsification of records and destruction of documents, and, in effect, cooking the books and then covering it up goes beyond simply delaying health care. It is, in effect, a form of fraud. We have taken a first step here to meet the immediate needs and help end the delays.

This bill will enable veterans to seek private health care at private facilities or private clinics or private hospitals if they have to wait too long or live too far away to make use of the VA facility.

It also increases resources--a longer-term effort to provide more doctors and fill the 400 vacancies that exist right now. Those resources are vitally necessary, not only to provide more providers but also to rebuild, renovate, and construct new health care facilities.

In providing more resources, this bill will also aid 26 VA facilities, such as the Errera clinic and facility in West Haven.

It also imposes accountability. It makes sure that officials in the VA who are incompetent or corrupt can be fired more easily and that bonuses or promotions can be stopped for those officials who betrayed a trust. It also shows that what is necessary here is more money and better management--not one or the other. Both together are necessary to really serve our veterans with the health care they deserve, which is first class, world class health care and nothing less. That is what our Nation's heroes truly deserve, and more and more of them will be making use of that health care--2 million more over the past 5 years and millions more over the next 5 years. That burden is not something to be addressed at the margins. It has to be addressed head-on and fully and generously because that is the promise we made to our veterans--first class, world class health care, and nothing less.

I will close by saying that accountability means something more than just firing corrupt or incompetent officials. It means holding them responsible for criminal culpability when they cook the books, falsify records, make false statements, and in effect lie to the American people as well as to their superiors in the VA. That will require a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice, which is the only law enforcement agency that has the resources, expertise, and authority to conduct a prompt and effective criminal investigation on the scope and scale that is required.

There are more than 50 locations where evidence of criminal culpability has been found. Thirteen percent of VA schedulers have indicated to the auditors that they were coerced or threatened into adopting, in effect, improper practices. Another 8 percent kept secret or unofficial lists, and many at those facilities and others may have cooked the books. I am not jumping to conclusions. I am not rushing to judgment. That is why an investigation is necessary and appropriate.

Only the Department of Justice can convene a grand jury. Only the Department of Justice has the FBI resources. The VA inspector general has 165 investigators for the whole country, and that is not enough. That is simply not sufficient for this investigation.

The VA is overwhelmed and overworked in its health care facilities, caseloads, and the needs that VA clients and patients are bringing to these facilities. The VA does some things very well when it comes to amputees, post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, and many kinds of injuries associated with the battlefield. Combat medicine is more advanced than it has ever been before, and the VA is part of a very progressive effort to increase and to deliver health care more efficiently to that population.

But the population of veterans who have fought in the longest wars in our history--although they may be a smaller part of our population than ever before in our wars--has been through multiple deployments, and they deserve the kind of intensive and comprehensive health care that the VA has committed to provide, and that will take more resources.

This bill is a beginning. It is only a downpayment on what we owe our Nation's finest and bravest. We owe them the best that we can provide in health care and nothing less.

That is part of what we promised, and that promise must be fulfilled. Thanks to the action of this body today we have begun on that path.

I urge the House of Representatives to adopt this measure and to help us fulfill that promise. I hope they will do it soon.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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