The Mid-Atlantic Regional Group
Blinded Veterans Association
Legislative News
Hello Everyone,
Well the famous long journey for passage of the S 1963 Caregiver legislation is now done for the political process part of this thing. HOWEVER, and I want to stress this part, in a meeting with senior VA Business Office staff yesterday afternoon they told the Veteran Service Organizations that the section of this legislation on Caregivers would take internally VHA and VBA at least 240 days to develop VA policy to cover the process of providing any payments to disabled veterans, kicking this thing down the road to very late November or December….if it start even then we would be lucky. The VA decision making process of who is required to have a family member caregiver, how independent is the veteran in doing their own daily living skills to function, what other services are necessary is going to take some time to develop for service connected severely disabled veterans.
The section of this to Eliminate the co-payments for catastrophically disabled veterans who attend a inpatient blind center or SCI center, is good news in they felt that part of the legislation would take between 90 days to at most 120 days to get new business office policy out to all VA medical centers to eliminate the co-payments.
So, the process of VA rules and policy will obviously take some time on this entire piece of legislation. But, we in BVA have three sections in here, the elimination of co-payments eventually, the BROS scholarship education assistance section, and the new language about VA providing airfare travel to veterans. I did not get a chance to ask that yesterday, but would safely guess that will take some time for VHA to decide when they will provide air travel and how they want to implement any changes. Beneficiary Travel within Title 38 Law though is not changed by this new language, so it has not been changed VA can argue that for non-service connected they won’t provide travel, however the language strongly suggests that if a veteran must have specialized services not provided at a local VA facility, they must provide air travel for a veteran…..again we have to use this as test case for some future blinded veterans.
Search the bill below for complete information on this.
Success, on a legislative effort, absolutely…..three down.
More to come on couple of other things BVA has been working on with legislation that is still pending for blinded veterans in another week.
OBAMA SIGNS CAREGIVER BILL
NEWS FROM…
CHAIRMAN BOB FILNER
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON VETERANS’ AFFAIRS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 5, 2010
OBAMA SIGNS CAREGIVER BILL
New law improves care for women veterans and provides unprecedented support for veteran caregivers
Washington, D.C. – House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner (D-CA) released the following statement in response to President Obama signing S. 1963 into law:
“Today I join the many proud veterans and their families in celebrating the enactment of a new law to provide much needed support for the care network of America’s wounded warriors. Our Nation stands together to honor those who sacrifice by ensuring critical support as they recover from combat injuries. The new law creates an unprecedented support program for veteran caregivers that will provide training, financial assistance, and improved respite service. The new law also improves health care services for America’s women veterans, expands the mental health services provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and expands supportive services for homeless veterans.
“President Obama promised a new direction for veterans – and once again lived up to that promise by signing a significant bill into law today. Congress will continue to ensure that the cost of war includes the cost of the warrior by listening to veterans and better understanding the concerns of their families, communities, and advocates. Only together as a Nation are we able to show veterans that we appreciate their courageous sacrifice.”
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Details of the legislation can be found here:
Speaker’s bill summary: http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/legislation?id=0367
Speaker’s blog: http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=2247
HVAC Committee release: http://veterans.house.gov/news/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=573
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