Fighting for our veterans

As the son of a veteran, the father of a veteran and a veteran myself, I am committed to ensure those who have “borne the battle” get the care and benefits they need and deserve.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has not met that standard in recent years. Veterans face unreasonable delays in care and benefits, and patients have died in the process. Employee misconduct went unpunished. Mismanagement and poor leadership let our veterans down.

{mosads}This year, working with the new Veterans Affairs secretary, David Shulkin, House Republicans have sought to right this ship by giving the VA enhanced hiring and firing authority and reforming the VA Choice program, which allows veterans to seek care outside VA facilities. There is more to do.

One reform I have championed seeks to expand access for veterans in need of organ transplants.

I have performed transplant surgeries and I understand the complex nature of these patients’ care, and I know firsthand the obstacles transplant patients face under the best of conditions. The way transplant care operates within the VA health-care system, however, is fundamentally different than any other medical specialty within the Department.

Currently, a veteran may seek specialty care outside of the VA closer to their home under certain circumstances. Yet for organ or bone marrow transplant surgery, veterans can only seek care at one of 14 VA transplant centers across the country, and not one of them covers all types of transplants. A veteran in Ocala, Fla., under care for a liver transplant must repeatedly travel to Nashville, Tenn. — more than 600 miles away and a 10 hour drive. Time is a critical variable with transplant surgery, where minutes wasted decrease the odds of success.

This bureaucracy creates undue burdens and hurts veterans’ chances of obtaining successful transplant surgery, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Furthermore, veterans at VA transplant centers wait 32 percent longer for a suitable organ than individuals outside the VA system. These obstacles lead veterans to seek expensive care outside of the VA or sometimes to give up all together, dooming them to a deadly fate.

This can and must change, and in the House we are taking bipartisan action.

The House, just this week, passed legislation I introduced to change this status quo.

The Veterans Increased Choice for Transplanted Organs and Recovery allows veterans to seek VA transplant care at one of the more than 200 non-VA federally certified transplant centers near their home.

This change will remove unnecessary obstacles for an extraordinarily vulnerable group of veterans in need of life-saving surgery. It is consistent with our larger strategy to put the needs of our veterans first and not hold them hostage to red tape, bureaucratic lethargy or “the way it’s always been done.”

As a surgeon and a veteran, I believe this is both good medicine and good public policy.

This is just one part of the solution. In addition to making sure the VA Choice program works as intended, the House Veterans Affairs Committee under Chairman Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) has moved to expand GI Bill benefits to more veterans, help veteran-owned small businesses succeed and ensure veterans in crisis have resources to cope and recover. The work to honor and care for our veterans can never end, however, because our debt of gratitude can never fully be repaid.

America’s veterans served in Europe and in the Pacific, Korea and Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and in an unknowable number of smaller conflicts and theaters of operation.

For them, that work goes on.

Dunn represents Florida’s 2nd District and is a member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.