DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS

Providing Veterans with the High-Quality Health Care They Deserve

• Continues to provide record levels of funding for medical care. $41.2 billion (including collections) for medical care—more than double the amount when President Bush took office. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides nationally recognized care to over five million veterans at more than 800 locations nationwide.

• Provides the best possible care for our wounded warriors. Address the unique needs of returning combat servicemembers with multiple injuries at four state-of-the-art polytrauma centers, 17 regionally-based facilities, and numerous specialists throughout the system. VA will also begin design and construction of a new polytrauma center this year.

• Expands mental health and substance abuse services. $3.9 billion for full continuum of care for veterans with substance abuse disorders and mental health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

• Focuses resources on core-mission veterans. Refocus resources on treating veterans with disabilities resulting from military service, lower incomes, and special needs or who are returning combat veterans, by proposing income-based enrollment fees and higher pharmaceutical copayments for all other veterans.

• Increases access to long-term care. Expand non-institutional long-term care that enables veterans to live and be cared for near, or in the comfort and familiar settings of, their homes surrounded by their families.

Speeding Veterans’ Receipt of Benefits

• Cuts the disability claims backlog. Bring the average length of time to process a veteran’s disability claim from a peak of 230 days in 2001 to 145 days in 2009.

• Supports priority processing for returning combat veterans. Accelerate processing of disability compensation claims for servicemembers returning from active duty service in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

Easing the Transition for Veterans as They Leave Active Military Service

• Continues implementing the recommendations of the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors.

  • VA and the Department of Defense are implementing recommendations that do not require legislation, such as employing Federal Recovery Coordinators to assist seriously injured servicemembers, improving recruitment and retention of mental health experts, and moving toward a single medical examination to establish eligibility for disability compensation from both Departments.

  • The Administration continues to seek enactment of the remaining Commission recommendations, including modernizing the disability compensation systems, broadening treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, and strengthening support for families.

• Supports benefits delivery upon discharge from military service. Provide America’s newest veterans with the benefits and services they have earned and bring about a seamless transition from military to civilian status, including allowing separating servicemembers to apply for benefits 180 days prior to their discharge to further speed benefits delivery.

• Improves collaboration with the Department of Defense. Implement ways to transfer records between the two agencies; share critical medical information electronically; process disability and other claims understandably and quickly; and in every way possible, support the transition from active duty to civilian life.

• Expands treatment for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Perform screenings for all recent combat veterans, increase training for all VA health care professionals, and conduct an outside review of VA’s TBI services.

Since 2001, the Department of Veterans Affairs has:

• Increased the resources available for veterans’ medical care by 106 percent.

• Provided medical care to more than 300,000 returning Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom servicemembers.

• Improved medical care and benefits delivery for our Nation’s wounded warriors.

• Funded over $5.5 billion to continue restructuring the medical care infrastructure to improve veterans’ access to quality primary and specialty health care services.

• Ensured more veterans have a burial option in a national or State veterans cemetery within 75 miles of their homes.

• Expanded the range of benefits available to veterans and improved the timeliness of benefits delivery.

• Smoothed the transition from active duty to civilian status.