VA EMERGENCY CARE UPDATE 8 June 2008
Posted by Service Officer on June 8th, 2008
On 21 MAY, the House passed the Veterans Emergency Care Fairness Act of 2007 (H.R.3819) by a vote of 412-0. The ball now has been passed to the Senate under a companion bill S.2142 introduced by Senator Sherrod Brown. Currently, when a veteran needs emergency medical treatment, the VA allows that veteran to go to the nearest private or community hospital. Once the veteran is stabilized, the veteran must then be transferred to a VA hospital for any necessary continued care. A problem arises when there is a wait for a bed in a VA hospital. The law does not require the VA to reimburse the hospital for the care given after the point of stabilization. S.2142/HR 3819 simply closes that loophole and requires the VA to reimburse the private hospital for care. In rural areas, the problem with the current law is particularly pronounced. Often, a patient may be deemed stable but is not necessarily stable enough to make ambulance trips traveling long distances. More specifically, the Veterans Emergency Care Fairness Act:
• Requires (under current law, authorizes) the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to reimburse certain veterans without a service-connected disability enrolled as active participants of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care plan for the cost of emergency treatment received in a non-VA facility until such time as such veterans are transferred to a VA facility.
• Requires (under current law, authorizes) the Secretary to reimburse certain veterans with a service-connected disability or a non-service- connected disability associated with or aggravating a service-connected disability for the value of emergency treatment for which such veterans have made payment from sources other than the VA.
Veterans are encouraged to contact their Senators and impress upon them the necessity of voting favorably on this legislation. This can be easily done by referring to http://capwiz.com/usdr/issues/alert/?alertid=11407326&queueid=[capwiz:queue_id], entering a zip code, reviewing a preformatted message, and completing constituency data to forward the message to their Senators. [Source: USDR action alert 22 May 08 ++]
