Proposal will expand health-care benefits
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 Proposal will expand health-care benefits March 16, 2009 Providence Journal Bulletin The proposed budget President Obama recently submitted to Congress calls for the Department of Veterans Affairs to extend health care eligibility to an additional half-million veterans over the next five years. VA’s budget would rise by $15 billion, to $113 billion, for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. And VA would increase by $25 billion over baseline during the next five years. The gradual expansion in health care enrollment that this would support will add, by 2013, more than 500,000 veterans who have been excluded from VA medical care benefits since 2003. Quality and timely care for lower-income and service-disabled veterans who rely on VA care would also be assured, allowing disabled military retirees for the first time to keep their full VA disability com-pensation along with their retirement pay. Money is also allocated in the budget for the new post-9/11 GI Bill so that it can be implemented with the levels of educational support originally included in the plan when passed by Congress last summer. Money is also provided for specialty care items including prosthetics, vision and spinal cord injury, aging and women’s health. The proposed budget also targets the worsening problem of homelessness among veterans by suggesting a collaboration between VA and nonprofit organizations that provide housing for at-risk veterans along with follow-up job training and preventive care for those veterans. #
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