Friday, March 29, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Kudos to Nevada’s own U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen, who this week introduced the Veterans Assistance Helpline Act. The bill requires the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to permanently maintain a toll-free telephone help line that connects military veterans, their immediate family members and their caregivers to VA services and benefits available in their area.
The VA established 800-MyVA411, a limited version of the hotline, in 2020, but it was never codified and thus both the hotline’s existence and the services it provides are subject to annual political and budgetary whims. Rosen’s bill seeks to change that.
It’s the third time Rosen has teamed up with Deb Fischer, R-Neb., to introduce a version of this bipartisan bill. Previous iterations died in the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. That cannot happen again. We’re calling on committee chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont., and ranking committee member Jerry Moran, R-Kan., to follow the example set by Rosen and Fischer and move the bill forward this year for the well-being of our nation’s veterans.
America’s service members volunteer to risk life and limb for the sake of the country. As a result, many veterans return home with physical and emotional scars that can make finding and maintaining stable housing, employment, health care, legal services and other support services challenging. Rosen’s bill would address these problems by ensuring that veterans have a reliable single phone number, staffed by professionals, that serves as a hub connecting veterans to government agencies, nonprofits, health care and support services that are local and have experience meeting the unique needs of those who wore the uniform.
The legislation comes at a time when it is needed more than ever. Decades-long conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan injured hundreds of thousands of American soldiers both physically and emotionally. Both wars were different than those of past conflicts because of the extensive use of improvised explosives to attack our troops.
A 2020 survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that around 41% of post-9/11 veterans have a service-related disability, compared with 25% of pre-9/11 veterans and just 13.5% of the American population generally.
Even veterans without disabilities face unique challenges related to effectively communicating transferable skills, overcoming discrimination and obtaining access to educational opportunities, good-paying jobs and sustainable long-term housing.
The rate of homelessness among military veterans is approximately 30% higher than among the general American population and, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2023 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, at least 35,000 veterans are unhoused in the United States today.
Connecting veterans to support services and assisting them in navigating the complexities of government bureaucracy so they can access the benefits they’ve earned is the bare minimum we can do to serve those who served the country.
Under the guidance of President Joe Biden, who is himself the father of a combat veteran, the VA took a significant step forward last year, when the department implemented a policy allowing veterans in acute suicidal crisis to receive emergency care at no cost. The policy covers emergency room care, inpatient or crisis residential care for up to 30 days, and outpatient care for up to 90 days. Nearly 50,000 veterans took advantage of the life-saving program in its first year, according to a statement from the VA.
The legislation enabling the policy change, the Veterans COMPACT Act, included a proposal by Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev., requiring that the VA…
This article was originally published by a lasvegassun.com . Read the Original article here. .