VFW Washington Weekly News

In This Issue: 

1. House VA Committee Questions Chantix Drug Use
2. House VA Committee Move Bills
3. Senate Holds Hearing on Claims Backlog
4. Medicare/TRICARE Vote

1. House VA Committee Questions Chantix Drug Use
The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee held an oversight hearing on VA’s use of the smoking cessation drug, Chantix, on veterans suffering from PTSD. Recent news articles have reported that VA did not properly warn veterans of the risks associated with the drug. Veterans were not informed that using the drug may cause side effects including anxiety, depression and feelings of suicide.

VFW Commander-in-Chief George Lisicki has demanded VA accountability over the incident and has asked Secretary James Peake to take decisive action with anyone involved. "Those in the VA who failed to properly notify America’s veterans that their medication could produce fatal side effects must resign their positions," said Lisicki, if not, then the VA secretary must take decisive action to terminate their employment."

• For the VFW’s Press Release: http://www.vfw.org/index.cfm?fa=news.newsDtl&did=4627
• For all the hearing information visit the House VA website at: http://veterans.house.gov/ 

2. House VA Committee Moves Bills
The House VA Subcommittee on Health moved several benefit bills yesterday, allowing the full committee to take action.
The VFW-supported bills before the committee included:

• HR 6419 would extend mental health care benefits to family members of veterans who receive non-service-connected treatment.
• HR 6445 would eliminate co-payments for catastrophically disabled veterans in category 4.
• HR 1527 would create a three-year pilot program to allow certain rural veterans enrolled in four of the VA’s 21 health care networks to receive covered health services through outside providers.
• HR 6122 would direct VA to develop a pain management program for veterans.

3. Senate Holds Hearing on Claims Backlog
The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee held the fourth in a series of hearings on VA’s claims backlog delays. Congress recently approved a historic increase in staffing for VBA, but the backlog in claims remains at around *300,000 with an average of 182 days to process. VA’s goal is to process all claims in 125 days. Chairman Akaka questioned what else VA needs to make necessary technological and staffing improvements to speed the process. The VSO panel referenced recommendations of the IBM Claims Processing Improvement Study and how some of their recommendations can be implemented by VA.

• Please note that what was reported to the Committee represents only a part of the VA backlog. In the week ending July 5, 2008 there were a total of 637,000 rating and non-rating cases pending of which 23% were over 6 months old, in addition the VA has over 172,000 cases on appeal.
• For more about the hearing visit the Senate VA website at: http://veterans.senate.gov/public

4. Medicare/TRICARE Vote
The Senate voted (69-31) against a 10.6% cut to Medicare rates on Wednesday. The VFW was a strong advocate in making sure that the proposed cuts were defeated. Payments to TRICARE doctors are directly linked to Medicare which would have meant that many doctors would have chosen to stop seeing TRICARE patients as well as Medicare users.

• For the Senate Roll Call Vote:
  http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00169