Dorgan on Veterans Health Bill

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Bill will help North Dakota's 57,000 veterans and their families

November 19, 2009 -- (WASHINGTON, D.C.) – The U.S. Senate has approved a bill co-sponsored by U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) that will improve health care benefits to American veterans and their families.

“We have 57,000 veterans in North Dakota who answered the call and served their country. We have an obligation to ensure they have access to quality care,” Dorgan said. “This is a bipartisan bill that will expand and improve veterans’ health care services, and I believe it will help our nation fulfill its obligation to the men and women who served in our armed services.”

More than a dozen veterans’ service organizations and military groups support the bill, which will improve benefits for veterans and their families in a number of ways, including:

• Providing counseling, support and health care to family caregivers of wounded warriors

• Eliminating co-payments for veterans who are catastrophically injured

• Allowing the VA to reimburse veterans for emergency care received at non-VA facilities

• Improving VA service to rural communities by expanding VA’s telemedicine program and its ability to coordinate with Indian Health Service and community organizations to provide medical services

• Requiring VA to train its mental health professionals in the treatment of sexual trauma

• Establishing and increasing eligibility for readjustment counseling for National Guard and Reservists who served in Iraq and Afghanistan

The bill is S. 1963, the Caregiver and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2009.

Source: Senator Byron Dorgan