STRIVE Act of 2025
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Rep. Gray, Adam [D-CA-13]
ID: G000605
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
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1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Bill Summary
(sigh) Oh joy, another legislative masterpiece from the geniuses in Congress. The STRIVE Act of 2025, because who doesn't love a good acronym? Let's dissect this mess.
**Diagnosis:** This bill is suffering from a severe case of "Veteran Voter Pandering Syndrome" (VVPS), a disease characterized by politicians attempting to buy votes with empty promises and bureaucratic Band-Aids. The symptoms are obvious: a hastily crafted bill that claims to help veterans but actually does little more than create new regulatory hurdles.
**New Regulations:** Section 2 creates a new section in the US Code, 1722D, which prohibits the Secretary of Veterans Affairs from collecting copayments from veterans under certain conditions. Sounds great, right? Except it's just a cleverly worded way to shift the burden from veterans to taxpayers. The VA will now have to absorb these costs, because who needs fiscal responsibility in government?
**Affected Industries and Sectors:** This bill primarily affects the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and its ability to collect copayments from veterans. However, it also has implications for healthcare providers and insurance companies that work with the VA.
**Compliance Requirements and Timelines:** The bill requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to establish timeliness standards for processing information related to copayments. Because, you know, the VA's existing inefficiencies weren't enough. There are no specific timelines mentioned, but I'm sure the bureaucrats will have a field day creating new regulations and forms.
**Enforcement Mechanisms and Penalties:** The bill doesn't specify any penalties for non-compliance, because who needs accountability in government? It does, however, grant the Secretary of Veterans Affairs waiver authority, which is just a fancy way of saying "we'll make exceptions when it's convenient."
**Economic and Operational Impacts:** This bill will likely increase costs for taxpayers, as the VA absorbs the copayment burden. It may also lead to increased administrative costs for healthcare providers and insurance companies that work with the VA. But hey, at least veterans might get a few extra dollars in their pockets... until they realize their taxes are paying for it.
**Prognosis:** This bill is a classic case of "legislative theater," designed to make politicians look good without actually solving any problems. It's a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, and I'm not optimistic about its chances of success. But hey, at least the politicians will get some nice photo ops with veterans.
**Treatment:** The only cure for VVPS is a healthy dose of skepticism and critical thinking. Unfortunately, that's in short supply among voters and politicians alike. So, we'll just have to watch this bill go through the motions, pretending to solve problems while actually making things worse. Joy.
Related Topics
đź’° Campaign Finance Network
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 644 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise In sum, the VA for the foreseeable future will experience significant fiscal, human capital, and infrastructure crosswinds and risks. Budgets are at historic highs, and with a workforce now above 400,000, the VA is contending with a lack of new veteran enrollees to offset the declining population of older veterans. Recruitment of medical and benefits personnel has become more challenging. Veterans are migrating from the northern states to the southern and western states for retirement and employment. Meanwhile, VA information technol- ogy (IT) is struggling to keep pace with the evolution of patient care and record keeping. Consequently, VA leaders in the next Administration must be wise and courageous political strategists, experienced managers to run day-to-day oper- ations more effectively, innovators to address the changing veteran landscape, and agile “fixers” to mitigate and repair systemic problems created or ignored by the present leadership team. VETERANS HEALTH ADMINISTRATION (VHA) Needed Reforms l Rescind all departmental clinical policy directives that are contrary to principles of conservative governance starting with abortion services and gender reassignment surgery. Neither aligns with service-connected conditions that would warrant VA’s providing this type of clinical care, and both follow the Left’s pernicious trend of abusing the role of government to further its own agenda. l Focus on the effects of shifting veteran demographics. At least during the next decade, the VA will experience a significant generational shift in its overall patient population. Of the approximately 18 million veterans alive today, roughly 9.1 million are enrolled for VA health care, and 6.4 million of these enrollees use VA health care consistently. These 6.4 million veterans are split almost evenly between those who are over age 65 and those who are under age 65, but the share of VA’s health care dollars is spent predominantly in the over-65 cohort. That share increases significantly as veterans live longer and use the VHA system at a higher rate. VHA enrollments of new users are increasingly at risk of being exceeded by the deaths of current enrollees, primarily because significant numbers of the Vietnam generation are reaching their life expectancy. The generational transition from Vietnam-era veterans to post-9/11 veterans will take several years to complete. The ongoing demographic transition is a catalyst for needed assessments of how the VA can improve the delivery of care to a numerically declining and differently dispersed national population — 645 — Department of Veterans Affairs of veterans—a population that is more active, reaching middle age or retirement age, and migrating for lifestyle and career reasons. At the center of the VHA’s evolution during this generational transition is an ongoing tension, some of it politically contrived, between Direct Care for Veterans provided from inside the VHA system and Community Care for Veterans who are referred to private providers participating in the VHA’s two Community Care Networks (CCNs). In recent years, the budget for Community Care has grown as demand from veterans has risen sharply, sometimes outpacing the budgets for Community Care at individual VAMCs. The Trump Administration made Community Care part of its “Veteran- centric” approach to ensure that veterans would be able to participate more fully in their health care decisions and have options if or when the VHA was unable to meet their needs. The Biden Administration has watered down that effort, has sought various procedural ways to slow the rate of referrals to private doctors, and at some facilities is reportedly manipulating the Community Care access standards required by the VA MISSION Act of 2018. If the makeup of Congress is favorable in 2025, the next Administration should rapidly and explicitly codify VA MISSION Act access standards in legislation to prevent the VA from avoiding or watering down the requirements in the future. First and foremost, a veterans bill of rights is needed so that veterans and VA staff know exactly what benefits veterans are entitled to receive, with a clear process for the adjudication of disputes, and so that staff ensure that all veterans are informed of their eligibility for Community Care. Currently, veterans are not routinely and consistently told that they are eligible for Community Care unless they request information or are given a referral. l To strengthen Community Care, the next Administration should create new Secretarial directives to implement the VA MISSION Act properly. Sections for consideration and areas for reform include the following: 1. Sections 101 and 103 (Community Care eligibility for access standards and the best medical interest of the veteran). 2. Section 104 (Community Care access standards and standards for quality of care).
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.