Congressman Sander Levin

Funding for VA Healthcare

With the VA expected to treat 5.8 million patients in the coming year—including more than 260,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans—Congress has made it a priority to fund health care and benefits that they were promised and that they deserve.

The 2008 and 2009 Veterans’ Affairs Appropriations (H.R. 2764 and H.R. 2638) both provided dramatic and historic increases in veterans funding. The 2008 appropriation, the single largest increase in the 77-year history of the VA, increased health care and benefits by $6.6 billion. The 2009 appropriation added an additional $4.5 billion in funding to provide increased mental health care, assist homeless veterans, increase VA long-term care, and provide additional funding to construct and modernize VA facilities.

These funding increases have translated into real improvements for our nation’s veterans including the hiring of 15,000 new medical service staff and 2,000 new claims processors to work down the backlog of benefits claims and reduce processing time for new claims. New maintenance funding is preventing a Walter Reed-like tragedy from occurring at a VA facility and 115 new Community Based Outpatient Centers and 40 new Vet Centers have been established.