MR. AKAKA. Mr. President, I rise proudly today to introduce legislation that would enhance the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) ability to provide mental health and other specialized services to its patients. At a time when our nation is at war, it is imperative that we ensure that all veterans have access to top quality mental health care, whether they visit a VA hospital or clinic.
At the time of its creation, the VA health care system was tasked with meeting the special needs of its veteran patients. Those veterans who suffered from spinal cord injuries, amputations, blindness, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, substance abuse, and homelessness required unique forms of treatment and rehabilitation. During the past few decades, VA has emerged as the industry leader in providing specialized services to these types of patients. Much of VA's expertise in these areas remains unparalleled in the larger health care community -- particularly with regard to mental health care.
However, it is with great dismay that I rise today, as VA's specialized programs are in jeopardy due to budget constraints. Increased demand and flatline budget increases over the past few years have literally starved the system. Sadly, this problem is not a new one. Back in 1996, Congress recognized the merits of these specialized programs and that they could be vulnerable to cuts because of their smaller scale. As such, we enacted legislation that required VA to retain its capacity to provide specialized services at the levels in place at the time of the bill's passage in 1996, and to annually report as to the status of its compliance with this requirement.
Despite this effort by Congress and the actions of my predecessors on this Committee to subsequently strengthen the original legislation to protect VA's specialized services, VA continues to underfund and cut back resources for these vital programs. Additionally, VA has employed measures such as counting dollars according to 1996 levels to appear as if they are in compliance. In the area of mental health care, this has been especially true. My proposed legislation amends the statute to ensure that capacity funding levels are adjusted for inflation. We need to be talking about real dollars -- not 1996 dollars -- to get a true sense of VA's capacity to care for veterans with mental health needs.
This legislation would also mandate that VA carry out a number of measures designed to improve mental health and substance abuse treatment capacity at Community-Based Outpatient Clinics and throughout the VA system. Currently, many clinics do not even provide mental health services at all. My bill would ensure that at least 90 percent of all clinics can provide mental health services, either onsite or through referrals. Furthermore, it would establish more comprehensive performance measures to provide incentives for clinics to maintain mental health capacity, for primary care doctors to screen patients for mental illness, and require that every primary health care facility be able to provide at least five days of inpatient detoxification services.
Finally, the bill seeks to foster greater cooperation between VA and the Department of Defense (DoD) in treating servicemembers and subsequently veterans who suffer from some form of mental health or readjustment disorder. It has been estimated that anywhere from 20 to 30 percent of the men and women who are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan will require treatment for a mental health issue. The bill would direct the two Departments to agree upon standardized separation screening procedures for sexual trauma and mental health disorders, as well as establish a joint VA-DoD Workgroup to examine potential ways of combating stigma associated with mental illness, educate servicemembers' families, and make VA's expertise in the field of mental health more readily available to DoD providers.
We still have much work to do in the area of mental illness associated with service in the armed forces. But this bill is a step in the right direction. I ask my colleagues for their support of this bill, for it not only seeks to combat disorders that can be very debilitating, but it also would protect specialized services that are at the heart of VA's mission.
