The Mid-Atlantic Regional Group
Blinded Veterans Association
Legislative News
September 2009
Yesterday the Senate VA Committee held a hearing on issue of Quality of Life benefits and the larger problems with fixing the claims system for disabled veterans came up in the questions by various senators during the hearing.
Blinded Veterans Association was allowed to have our testimony for the record accepted into the hearing as we raised some issues specific to the discussion by the contract company that had done research for the VA on Quality of Life payments for disabled veterans. One very troubling area of the ECON Systems report was in reviewing different types of disabled veterans, there statement was that those veterans suffering from either vision or hearing loss have the least impact on quality of life in regards to there research in comparing different types of disabilities. BVA provided testimony in July before the House VA Committee on this same issue and raised serious concerns about this and whether this could impact in the future any decisions about including a Quality of Life payment in the service connected disability systems that would be less for blinded or deaf veterans than those suffering from other types of injuries or mental health conditions.
(Attached is our testimony for the record for this hearing)
AKAKA & TESTER CALL FOR DELIBERATE ACTION TO FIX VA’S VETERANS’ DISABILITY COMPENSATION SYSTEM
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today U.S. Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI), Chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, heard testimony on the state of VA’s system for disability compensation. Witnesses from VA, veterans service organizations and the larger disability policy community urged cautious movement toward fixing what many acknowledge is a broken system.
Senator Akaka stated: “To bring the right changes to a process this complicated and important, we must be deliberative, focused, and open to input from all who are affected. At the same time, we cannot be paralyzed by complexity; the current system is already outdated, and it will get worse until we act.”
Senator Tester stated: “No doubt about it – we need to measure twice and cut once, not the other way around. I hope that among the experts in the room making decisions on ratings are the fighting men and women who are coming back. I would bring them in early in the process, not after the fact.” Later in the hearing, under further questioning from Tester, VA officials pledged that veterans would be involved early in the process of any revisions to the disability compensation process.
Today’s hearing is the latest in a series on veterans’ disability compensation. Witnesses included representatives from VA, Economic Systems Inc,VA’s Advisory Committee on Disability Compensation, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and Easter Seals. Records of earlier hearings are available at http://veterans.senate.gov, and the full written opening statements and written testimony are available here.
Other testimony can be found on the above links.
Tom Zampieri
Director Government Relations
Blinded Veterans Association
Washington DC
BVA's Legislative Alerts Group