The truth is, section 108, whether it's part of this bill or not, was going t...
September of this year.
“And what T. Cova was going to do was going to roll those offsets into the pay for for this bill,”
rather than all that savings going to the general treasury. So, it's a matter of, if you view any kind of reform to the VA compensation model as taking money from veterans versus meaningful Medicare reform, medical reforms, to the antiquated VA system, most of these rating criteria have not been touched since World War II. Now, if we can't modernize these things and update them and make sure every penny
of that offset stays in the veteran space, we're not going to have any political room to even have a debate moving into the future. And, oh, by the way, every American is about to be installed and in social security five years. We're doing two trillion deficits spending every year. And to pretend, just to give our veterans, Americans are capable of achieving extraordinary things when they have the freedom and opportunity to do so. This is American Potential.
Hey, everyone, welcome to American Potential Podcast. I'm your host, David From. You know, before we get into our guest here who we're going to talk about veterans' health care and benefits and some really transformational legislation, you know, I was thinking about veterans, you know, on the other day, I was watching a movie that involved some war and it's just, you know,
I'm always struck by the service that not only veterans themselves engage in, but their families.
Actually, my family was pretty recent immigrants in the 1900s and we didn't have any buddy because of some health issues. We actually didn't have anybody served in like World War II or
“Vietnam, but in general, Matt, did you guys have anybody, do you have any relatives that served?”
Yeah, we've got, I've got loads of family who served mostly Air Force and my family on both sides at the family, but my mother, her mother and father, so my grandmother and grandfather and my mother side have a kind of a unique story in that they were both in the Army Air Corps together during World War II. And I'm sure my mother could tell the story better, I'm sure she's got more of the details, but they both met each other in the Army Air Corps. My grandmother was working
as a secretary. She joined the service to do that and my grandfather was a fresh, I believe, second lieutenant and he was running some part of a logistics squadron that they had and they both met together in the Army Air Corps, went through the war together, then after the war got married together and you could say the rest is history, they ended up having seven kids and my mother was
one of them, so in ever since then that side of the family's always been a big, big military family
and one way or another. Wow, what a cool story. Love, love in the war. Wow. Today's guest is Marie Corveter and Adam Yankee, he's also the strategic director in South Carolina for Concerned Veterans for America. We have Adam on today to talk about the taking care of American's Veterans Act because this is a transformational bill, expanding health care and benefits for veterans, some of which haven't been adjusted over 30 years. Adam, welcome back to the podcast.
Thanks for having me David. Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks. So before we start talking about this bill and there's a lot of bills involved actually in this whole measure, but can you talk a little bit about CVA, Concerned Veterans for America and, you know, what CVA does and explain what you all do? Yeah, Concerned Veterans for America has been a grassroots organization for about a decade and a half now and I think in our inception we really focused on transformative change in the veteran health
care system, viewing it as taking care of our nation's veterans while also when powering and providing health care solutions that will translate down the line for all of Americans, right? So just to visualize kind of what we were going through around that 2011 to 12th time frame, we were, you know, the VA scandal in Phoenix, Arizona of veterans dying on secret waiting lists, all kinds of
“major gaps to access to health care and I think that's what led our organization to champion”
VA health care reform, culminating in 2018 with getting the Mission Act baths. Yeah, and I mean,
that was such an amazing start for CVA. I remember, you know, as with the company back then and
it was striking to me how poorly our veterans were being treated and unfortunately still like that you would think that if you served our nation and particularly if you're injured that you would just get the best gold-plated care that we could get and yet it's been quite the opposite for a lot of veterans.
Well, honestly, having been a purple-art retired Marine from 2005 to 2010 to ...
from the Department of Defense health care system to the VA system and that and that weird period
“we just discussed. My own health care journey after being injured was not great to say the least.”
Barrier after Barrier over medication. I mean, the list goes on and on, but at the end of the day, it just can really be described as a lack of empowerment in your own health care decisions. A lot of Americans don't understand that the VA system is kind of dangerous in that it's a one-size-all solution for everybody, right? So if it doesn't work for you, there was no other option. You can't even pick your doctors in the VA system. You're just assigned like a number and then you
have to go through the long process for referrals if they even have a specialist in the system and it goes on and on and on. So in a lot of ways, we're here to warn Americans that maybe socialized medicine is not the best solution for a health care period and if our nation's finest that sign that dotted line and sacrifice so much for our country or running into these barriers, that's simply not acceptable. So I think that led us to writing and advocating for the VA
mission Act in 2018 and what that did is it allowed veterans to choose for the first time in any
serious number ever. So in 2018 when the bill passed under Trump, what it did is it allowed veterans that met certain criteria like distance from a VA, 20 to 30 days wait for a specialist or primary care to be able to use community care options. So what does that do? You can request to have all your stuff done through community care or just some of your referrals for specialty care, but what we saw is millions of veterans choosing their doctors, picking those health care providers in their
community. I know personally if I had to see a specialist whether it's cardiac or oncology, I want to see the best person in the country for my care and this program allows that. Now there
“were a lot of hiccups and the implementation of this bill and I think that's what's leading us to”
what we're fighting for now, which is the Veteran Access Act, to continue to build off that success. And oh by the way 43% of all veterans enrolled in the VA health care system are using community care currently. So it's a very popular program. Wow. Well, let's talk about the taken care of Americans Veterans Act. And it's been a big focus in the veteran benefit and health care space. It's kind of the biggest scene to come along. It seems like a decade. So tell us what it is to
start with. So this is probably one of the most transformative veteran bills in about 20 years in the veteran space ever since we did the early 2000 reform on the GI bill. It's got 60 plus bills in it. The three most popular of those bills are kind of what I wanted to cover today. But it's a great example of how offset dollars in reform can go to make go to making the biggest impacts in your community. So I would say the three biggest bills inside this omnibus bill would be the major
Richard Star Act, the Veteran Access Act and the love lives on act. And I'd like to talk about all three of those. Yeah, that's great. I mean, so overall this is a package. You said 60 plus bills, which is really immense. I imagine we've had a commercial mic boss chairman of the Veterans Committee. I imagine he's the sponsor of this, right? Good. Good Illinois and from from Vast. But this package is huge. So yeah, let's start with the Richard Star Act. You original who was Richard
Star. And then what would his act do? So I've been in communication with major Richard stars, brother David Star, who's a big advocate for this bill. And he's also a former member of the Veteran Justice Alliance, which is one of the other Veteran Service organizations that sign not in support of this bill. And what happened is, major Richard Star was wounded in combat,
“no fault of his own. I think he had 18 or 19 years of service only to find out when he was medically”
retired that he cannot collect his department of defense pension. So the way the rules are currently written, if combat veterans are wounded, they get something called combat related special compensation, which is basically a percentage of a percentage of a percentage. And they end up about getting
10 to 20 percent of their formal DOD pension. So a lot of people in the community and the veteran
community view this as an injustice, just because we got wounded in combat, no fault of our own. We can't carry on to that 20 year number to get our DOD pensions. This bill fixes that injustice and allows combat wounded veterans to collect their DOD retirement pension and VA compensation at the same time. Sadly, major Richard Star passed away before seeing this bill get passed due to complications with his injuries. Wow, that's just shocking to me that we were penalizing people
For being wounded when they're fighting for our nation.
right? They're being financially penalized. Basically, I mean, if a civil service employee had a
medical condition, like let's say carpal tunnel from typing too much, if they had to retire before the limit, they can get a special pension version of their retirement, whereas the DOD really can't. And a lot of people view that as an injustice and I personally tend to lean that way as well.
“If you almost paid the ultimate sacrifice for your country, I think it's a pretty reasonable”
ass that you get a pension based on your rank and time and grade and time served. It's not like, let's say, a veteran served six years, got wounded in Ramadi or Afghanistan. They're not getting a 20-year pension at like an E8 salary if they continued their career. It's retroactive to their time and grade to the time of retirement. So it's generally considered more fair because it's
still calculating time and grade and rank. Yeah. Well, yeah, we'll check that box for saying that
that one sounds like a good idea. My gosh. Sounds like an operator. Man, I didn't know that was happening. So another we've talked about before and you mentioned as a Veterans Access Act, what would the Veterans Access Act do? So it's one thing that surprised me the most is I'm traveling in the country. I'm talking to thousands of veterans a year. I'm going to all these different states, I'll talk into veteran community leaders and almost no one knows about the mission act,
no one knows the history of it, what benefits, you know, and, and perfectly to blame, I think we did a poor job articulating how transformative this bill was, but that's not on us, necessarily, because there's provisions in the mission act that would mandate the VA,
the let veterans know that they qualify for this program. But once I got to talk into everybody,
everyone's like, oh, I love that. How do I do it? I can't tell you how many thousands of times I had to talk veterans through how to access these different resources to be able to use community care. So what the Veteran Access Act does essentially is it builds off all the successes
“of the mission act, and it switches the legal language from you may to you, you shall. You have to do this,”
right? So what we've seen from 2018 to now is different VA's misinterpreting the access standards, minivate VA's maliciously not telling veterans they qualify, doing everything in their power, you up to an including secret waiting list so that veterans don't qualify for private healthcare options, right? So I don't know why VA employees would view this as a threat other than giving empowerment and choice to veterans, because at the end of the day, we just want veterans to
thrive and live the best quality life they possibly can. So I think the biggest reforms in the veteran access act would be um codifying access standards nationally. So it's no, it's no longer up to regional visits to interpret access standards like how many days wait, how long of a distance of a drive, things of that nature, and that kind of ties into the next reform in the bill where the VA has to actively use tele outreach to notify every single veteran that qualifies for this program
and also how to utilize it. And one of the biggest barriers we saw in the mission act is that the VA created bureaucracy on top of a layer of bureaucracy, right? So what does that mean? So each regional healthcare hospital created a community care department, which was adding artificial wait times on a program that wasn't designed to have wait times. Meaning you had to go through the referral process, there was an unelected board of doctors that voted on if your referral was viable or not,
just all kinds of handholding in issues and the main issue was billing in the beginning. A lot of visions were backdating almost a year to paying these private providers,
“which we kind of view as a backdoor way of really kind of limiting the program, right?”
Because how many small private healthcare physicians can sit on a year or a year and a half of back billing for their team? They can't. They have to get that dotted line into the, you know, into the black, not in the red every month. So a lot of this fixes that, and on top of it all, there's going to be a website, a national level website, and a self scheduling portal. So instead of having to go through all the community care offices all the time and feel like you're
getting ping-ponged back and forth between the private doctor and the VA, you can schedule your own appointments and track all those engagements on a website. Well, that sounds like some great improvements. Yeah, yeah, it's just, you know, I go back to what you said earlier. I mean, really, whenever we talk about like single payer government run healthcare where you don't get to choose your doctors, you know, that much choice. And we put it out there as a scary thing
that could be in the future. It's like, well, this is true already for our veterans. And we see the shortcomings of it and how it's failing our veterans. We certainly don't want that to
Be with what everybody has to deal with.
any group of people that we should be serving and giving all the options that we can and the best healthcare that we can. It's certainly the minimum amount of served and blood burnation.
“Yeah, the great completely. And I think the biggest part of the veteran access act reform”
that is going to really make a dent on that high suicide rate that the veteran community has been talking about for the last 30 years is we also have a true choice pilot in that program. And what that does is if an inpatient mental health or substance abuse facility is in network or takes Medicare and Medicaid, a veteran who qualifies for veteran health care can show up when they're ready without a referral to get the care when they need it on their timeline. Because I used
to be a former clinical social worker at the Department of Veterans Affairs for a number of years. In fact, I worked at the VA when they implemented the mission act. And I just saw from both lenses, right, as a veteran that had to go through the system, as a clinician in the system. And now someone that's advocating for policy changes to fix all these issues, I've seen all sides of it and it's not perfect. So a lot of veterans get access to some of the best doctors,
some of the best outcomes of care in their VA system, and some of them get the worst. But the only difference is that you're locked in, right? There's no alternative option. While this program gives you that alternative option where you're empowered to make your own health care choices. So just to go over the numbers, you know, if we were to talk about any
“proposed legislation this day and age, I think it would be completely irresponsible to not talk”
about the math. We are facing extreme financial hardship in this country, which is a major contributor to our national debt and inflation. So the VA right now has about 450,000 employees
and they only serve about 8 to 9 million people. So we have a VA bureaucracy that's as big as
of the active duty army of the United States of America. Wow. And that total expenditure, the cost is projected to be almost half a trillion dollars next year, right? So just like many government programs, there's bloke. Should veterans be at the front of the line? I think most Americans agree. But if we can't honestly look at the issues in our community and where the fraud ways to abuses and put those dollars to the maximum impact, we're not serious about any kind
of reform or fixing these issues for veterans and also we're just contributing further to the national debt, right? And you know, argument's sake, oh, we fought for our country. We deserve this. I agree completely, but also I don't want to bankrupt my nation and make sure my kids or have my kids not have access to the American dream because a certain bureaucratic program is just out of control and spending, right? So that's just like a natural balancing act of all these
problems and to pretend we can't have those conversations because we deserve every penny more more and more is not honest and not sustainable. Yeah, I mean, the way that these programs are going to be paid for is one of the part part of the debate. How is it being proposed that this is paid for? Yeah. So it kind of blindsided everybody, right? Because this bill only came about about two and a half months ago. It's a big omnimus bill. It's really ambitious and what it did
is it took 60 of the most popular veteran bills lumped them into one with some significant compromises and all of them to give them a real relevant chance of passing. So the major Richard Star Act has been in one form or another in both houses for about six years. It has been
the most co-sponsored veteran bill for about five years. It has never come up to a vote. Now,
I don't want to get into left versus right, but if this was a priority in the last administration, the last four years, it would have come up for a vote, but it didn't. And like many bills, it morphed from that original intent to add on to add on to add on to the point where it's kind of a political
“hoppitate, because it's so expensive. How do we pay for it? So that kind of leads to the, I think the”
biggest friction in the veteran community on this bill. This bill is pulling at 70 plus percent in the veteran community, right? There's no doubt that we're all on agreement that all these reforms are massively needed. The disagreement is in how much, right? So this version of the major Richard
Star Act has language in it that's less than, like, either 50 percent or 70 percent rating, right?
So a lot of people that are original supporters of the veteran acts or the major Richard Star Act say, keep the standalone version. But the CBO estimate on that bill is like 70 plus billion over 10 years, right? So I think that the Tacava version honors the original intent of making
Sure that combat wounded veterans get their fair share and get their DOD pens...
the veteran access act and also give the love lives on act, which by the way, a lot of Americans
don't know this, the love lives on act, it allows spouses and partners of deceased service members to get their compensation, which is like a survivor benefit payment and also health care access through childcare as well as survivor benefits to those children to make sure that they can get educational benefits. Now, as the rules or the laws are currently written, if that person decides to remarry, they lose everything. So what we're saying in effect is you do sacrifice the ultimate
“thing for your country and you can't have a life after that if you want to keep your benefits.”
So this fixes that injustice and the whole spirit of this bill is to take care of the most critically injured in their families. That is the whole priority of this bill. Now, where it really kind of gotten the mud is section 108. That's what everybody's arguing about right now. And what section 108 is is in 2022 and Biden's administration, the VA proposed a VA compensation rating change for sleep apnea and tonight is at the 30% rating for sleep apnea and the 10% rating for
tonight is now. The current rating criteria for sleep apnea is you have to have daytime and drowsiness and you do not need a CPAP machine to qualify for 30% disability rating for the rest of your life. Now, when this bill moved through Congress about a month ago and Dan Crenshaw, whether you like to guide or not got right really furious, he's furious because he gets 30% for losing an eye in combat. Whereas veterans qualify for 30% disability ratings for sleep apnea
without even requiring a CPAP machine. Now, whether you think these reforms are horrible or bad, the people that oppose this bill are saying that we are taking money from future veterans to pay
for other veterans, which is an injustice. Rather than the reality is that this bill was reported,
or this rule change was proposed four years ago. I've never even heard about it until the
“opposition was using it to destroy this bill. And the truth is, section 108, whether it's part of”
this bill or not, was going to go into effect September of this year. And what Ticava was going to do was going to roll those offsets into the pay for for this bill, rather than all that savings going to the general treasury. So, it's a matter of if you view any kind of reform to the VA compensation model as taking money from veterans versus meaningful medical reforms to the antiquated VA system, most of these rating criteria have not been touched since World War II. Now, if we can't modernize
these things and update them and make sure every penny of that offset stays in the veteran space, we're not going to have any political room to even have a debate moving into the future. And, oh, by the way, every American is about to be in solvent in Social Security in five years. We're doing two trillion deficits spending every year. And to pretend just because we're veterans, we cannot be good stewards of these dollars and that any meaningful reform to an
antiquated VA comp model is not viewed as more resources going to where it should go, it's kind of ridiculous in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, we really should expect that our lawmakers do all the things, being, meaning treat our veterans fairly with respect and give them great health care and the benefits that they deserve and that they've earned and that they're not even penalized for serving. And yet, still be physically responsible and have efficient programs.
I don't, I don't think that's too much for us to ask. So, no, it's just that. Yeah, I start good. No, no, go ahead, Adam. I was just going to say, I mean, the way they're framing it in this fight is that you're taking money away from future veterans, the ones that are fighting right now and are in to pay for other veterans, whereas something was proposed to change and we're forced to defend that change when no one else was fighting it. And, oh, by the way, the opposition to this bill
does not have any alternative pay for a method. We just posted a $440 billion deficit spending last month.
The days of just saying, yes, without looking at price tags are over. And we're going to have to continue to fight V8, CVA has been fighting for third party meaningful audits to the VA, since our, since we started. We're trying to find alternative options to increase outcomes and also make sure every dollar is going to the maximum impact. We're not trying to cut anybody's benefits. But if we view any kind of reform to the VA compensation model as taking from
“future veterans, I think we're in a position where we're saying, okay, we're going to sacrifice all”
60 of these bills with no path forward. Realistically, most of these bills are at the end of their
Life cycle is a bill.
And the likelihood of finding an alternative revenue source when we're spending two trillion
and deficit spending every year is likely zero. So we're about to have a half trillion dollar VA spending budget next year. About 65% of that to 70% of it is VA compensation. Now, if we can't look and modernize that system and any kind of scrutiny to fix it and reform it, it's viewed as taking money from future vets. What we're saying is none of these other bills are ever going to get done. Everything's going to stay the status quo. And then, oh, when we reach
those austerity measures in three to five years, because every single federal program is wildly over budget, we're willing to cut everything equally across the board for all of us, not prioritizing
the most injured among us and their families. Like, that's the reality of the situation right now.
So my fear is that, you know, whether you think the VA compensation pay for is good or bad, I completely get both sides of it. But we don't have the political credibility to do the next flight. And oh, by the way, it's going to be increasingly harder to pass any of these bills because you do have to have a funding source in a pay for for these bills. So if everyone's
“looking for perfect, I don't think we're in that world anymore. Now, honestly, I think most”
special interest groups advocating for perfect or they're opinion of perfect is what's contributing to this no hold to no compromise environment. Yeah. Yeah, it would seem like this, this needs to really get moving or it needs, it should have the support to pass because there's so much good in here. And done in, you know, in a more responsible way than before. As we wrap up, are there any other myths or any other information about this bill that you think people should know?
I just think at the end of the day, we're all Americans. And I've never seen
the lack of civility that I've seen in the last two months in the veteran space, talking about this bill, I completely get the opposition's position on this and I completely understand our position on of it. But at the end of the day, if we're not willing to have a voice in these reforms and make sure every penny of those reforms goes back to the veteran space, we're kind of setting ourselves up for failure here. And I know personally that veterans can't wait. The current VA model doesn't work,
expanding the veteran access act is going to truly make an impact on those health care outcomes. And at the end of the day, the VA compensation model should be around empowering and bettering your life. It's more than just a paycheck because of some of the hardships we had to face. It's both, but if we can maximize health care outcomes for people to have higher quality of life, at the end of the day, that should be the priority. And this bill gets it done for the most
“for most of the critically injured veterans and their families. And that's why I really hope to”
get this across the line. That's great. What folks want to follow along with on the progress of the bill and maybe even get involved with concerned veterans from America? How can we do that? Yeah, go to our website, CV, the number four A.org. And you can see everything we're working on. You can sign the letter to go to your federal delegation and support of this bill.
And it also will email you weekly updates of what's going on and why. You can also check out some of our national level media posts as well to keep updated on community events and what we're doing to get this bill across the line. Great. Well, certain veterans from America is doing great work and sure you add them. It's really such a large work and appreciate you fighting for your fellow veterans.
Thank you David, appreciate it. Thanks. If folks, if you like this episode, we'll like to say connected with the podcast. Be sure to like and subscribe our channel as well as following us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.
“And always remember, liberty and freedom are easily taken for granted.”
Don't take them for granted. Go out there and defend the liberty for you. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to American Potential. You may listen to more stories from Americans working every day to expand freedom and opportunity in their communities by visiting AmericanPotential.com.
