Senator Blunt, Colleagues Announce Plan To Make It Easier For Servicemembers & Veterans To Document War-Related Injuries

Press Release

U.S. Senators Roy Blunt (Mo.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and U.S Representatives Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) and Steve Stivers (Ohio) today introduced the "Mental-health Exposure Military Official Record Act" (MEMORy Act), bipartisan, bicameral legislation aimed at helping servicemembers and veterans better track potential exposures during military service that could be later connected to mental health and traumatic brain injuries.

Nearly 300,000 American veterans struggle with Post Traumatic Stress (PTS) and another 25,000 veterans face mild Traumatic Brain Injuries (mTBI). Without proper documentation or a visible, physical injury, it is often difficult for veterans to establish a connection between injuries and military service. This lack of documentation can lead to improper medical care and increases in the disability claims backlog.

"Too often, our nation's heroes suffer from unseen wounds linked to traumatic events during military service, without a way to prove or document the cause of their injuries," Blunt said. "This bill would make it easier to document exposures to significant events so we can better develop servicemembers' and veterans' claims and work to improve treatment for the increasing number of Post Traumatic Stress and mild Traumatic Brain Injury cases."

"Veterans should be able to focus on their recovery, not have to prove the cause of their injury. When veterans seek claims for war-related injuries like post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury, the burden for establishing the connection should be on the Department of Defense, not on the veteran," Brown said. "When Mr. Fairman, an Ohio combat veteran, shared the frustrations many veterans face in filing claims, I knew we could do better. This legislation will ensure that the Department of Defense does a better job at tracking significant events so that service members and veterans have more thorough records when seeking medical care. I would also like to thank Senator Blunt, and Reps. Duckworth and Stivers for their advocacy for our service members and veterans by agreeing to sponsor this legislation in the House."

The MEMORy Act -- a revised version of the Significant Event Tracker (SET) Act previously introduced by Brown -- would ensure that unit commanders document events that individual service members are exposed to which might later be connected to PTS, mTBI, or other injuries. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) would then furnish these Significant Event entries to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to ensure better treatment for veterans and faster processing of claims. The bill would allow unit commanders and their delegates to report unit and individual exposures to traumatic events. By creating an individualized SET, injuries that are not currently documented through physical injuries, awards, or other service-related means will now be included on an individual's medical history.

Currently, veterans who file compensation and disability claims, or seek medical care, must provide the VA with evidence that connects their claim to previous military service. In cases and conditions such as PTS and mTBI, veterans must provide either a written testimony from another servicemember who witnessed the accident, submit relevant medical documentation that supports the claim, or possess military orders that prove the veteran was in a unit or location that supports the claim. These types of documentation provide only a secondary account of the claim and may not fully illustrate the veteran's claim of service connected to PTS and mild TBI.