WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine) released the following statement today after the Senate passed the Veterans’ Access to Care through Choice, Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014, a bipartisan agreement authored by Senators Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would improve veterans’ access to health care and address serious problems facing the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA):

“Today the United States Senate joined together to send a strong message to our veterans: we will continue to stand-by you just as you stood-by us, and we will do what’s right when it comes to fixing problems at the VA. Our veterans deserve the highest-quality care, and they cannot – and should not – have to wait undue amounts of time to see a doctor when they need one,” Senator King said. “I am hopeful that this is the first of many instances that the Senate will take to put the institutional stalemate aside for the good of the American people. This bill is an example of how we can do that and it’s a symbol of our unfailing commitment to do right by those who have given so much for us.”

Introduced by Senators Sanders and McCain, the legislation is a bipartisan agreement that addresses the issues that contributed to widespread mismanagement at VA as well several other measures to achieve wider VA reform. Highlights include:

• Authorizes leases for 26 new medical facilities in 17 states and Puerto Rico.
• Designates funds for hiring more VA doctors and nurses to provide quality care in a timely manner.
• Expands existing VA authority to refer veterans for private care. Veterans experiencing long delays at the VA could seek care instead at community health centers, Indian health centers, Department of Defense medical facilities or private doctors. The two-year program also would offer those same options to veterans who live more than 40 miles from a VA hospital or clinic.
• Gives VA the authority to fire or demote senior leadership staff for poor performance but provide expedited appeals to the Merit Systems Protection Board in order to prevent abuses of the new management powers for political or other inappropriate reasons.
• Eliminates wait times as part of employee performance measures, which are used in determining bonuses for VA employees.
• Makes certain that all recently-separated veterans taking advantage of the Post 9/11 GI Bill get in-state tuition at public colleges and universities. For the first time, those same education benefits would be extended to surviving spouses of veterans who died in the line of duty.

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