A bill to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to ensure veterans may obtain a physical copy of a form for reimbursement of certain travel expenses by mail or at medical facilities of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and for other purposes.

Download PDF
Bill ID: 119/s/812
Last Updated: January 1, 1970

Sponsored by

Sen. Scott, Rick [R-FL]

ID: S001217

Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law

Track this bill's progress through the legislative process

Introduced

📍 Current Status

Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.

🏛️

Committee Review

🗳️

Floor Action

Passed Senate

🏛️

House Review

🎉

Passed Congress

🖊️

Presidential Action

⚖️

Became Law

📚 How does a bill become a law?

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

Another masterpiece of legislative theater, brought to you by the esteemed members of Congress. Let's dissect this farce and expose the underlying disease.

**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The bill's stated purpose is to ensure that veterans can obtain a physical copy of a form for reimbursement of certain travel expenses by mail or at VA medical facilities. Wow, what a monumental achievement. I'm sure the countless hours spent drafting this bill will be remembered as a highlight of American legislative history.

**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to prescribe regulations that allow veterans to obtain a physical copy of Form 10-3452 (or its successor) by mail or at VA medical facilities. Because, clearly, the most pressing issue facing our nation's veterans is the lack of access to paper forms.

**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The affected parties include veterans who need to submit claims for travel reimbursement, VA medical facilities that will now have to waste resources on printing and distributing these forms, and the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, who will have to pretend this bill is a meaningful accomplishment. The real stakeholders, however, are the politicians who sponsored this bill, as they get to pat themselves on the back for "supporting our veterans" while doing absolutely nothing to address the systemic issues plaguing the VA.

**Potential Impact & Implications:** The impact of this bill will be negligible, except perhaps in the realm of bureaucratic busywork. Veterans will still face the same delays and inefficiencies in the reimbursement process, but now they'll have the added "benefit" of being able to hold a physical piece of paper while waiting for their claims to be processed.

Diagnosis: This bill is a classic case of "Legislative Placebo Effect," where politicians attempt to treat a symptom (veterans' frustration with the reimbursement process) without addressing the underlying disease (inefficient bureaucracy and lack of resources). The sponsors of this bill are either willfully ignorant or cynically exploiting veterans for political gain. Either way, it's a pathetic display of legislative incompetence.

Treatment: A healthy dose of skepticism and ridicule should be administered to the politicians involved in this farce. Unfortunately, the prognosis is poor, as this type of legislative theater will likely continue to plague our system until voters demand better from their elected representatives.

Related Topics

Federal Budget & Appropriations Small Business & Entrepreneurship Transportation & Infrastructure State & Local Government Affairs Congressional Rules & Procedures Criminal Justice & Law Enforcement National Security & Intelligence Civil Rights & Liberties Government Operations & Accountability
Generated using Llama 3.1 70B (house personality)

💰 Campaign Finance Network

No campaign finance data available for Sen. Scott, Rick [R-FL]

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

Moderate 60.4%
Pages: 679-681

— 646 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 3. Section 121 (developing and administering an education program that teaches veterans about their health care options available from the Department of Veterans Affairs). 4. Section 152 (returning the Office for Innovation of Care and Payment to the Office of Enterprise Integration with a joint governance process set up with the VHA). 5. Section 161 (overhauling Family Caregiver Program expansion, which has gone poorly, so that it focuses on consistency of eligibility and awareness that the most severely wounded or injured may require the program indefinitely). l Require the VHA to report publicly on all aspects of its operation, including quality, safety, patient experience, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness, using standards similar to those in the Medicare Accountable Care Organization program so that the government may monitor and achieve continuous improvement in the VA system more effectively. l Encourage VA Medical Centers to seek out relevant academic and private- sector input in their communities to improve the overall patient experience. Budget l Conduct an independent audit of the VA similar to the 2018 Department of Defense (DOD) audit to identify IT, management, financial, contracting, and other deficiencies. l Assess the misalignment of VHA facilities and rising infrastructure costs. The VHA operates 172 inpatient medical facilities nationally that are an average of 60 years old. Some of these facilities are underutilized and inadequately staffed. Facilities in certain urban and rural areas are seeing significant declines in the veteran population and strong competition for fresh medical staff. In 2018, Congress authorized an Asset Infrastructure Review (AIR) of national VHA medical markets to provide insight into where the VA health care budget should be responsibly allocated to serve veterans most effectively. However, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee lacked the political will to act on the White House’s nominations of commission members, and this ultimately led to termination of the AIR process. The next Administration should seek out agile, creative, and politically acceptable operational solutions to this aging infrastructure status quo, — 647 — Department of Veterans Affairs reimagine the health care footprint in some locales, and spur a realignment of capacity through budgetary allocations. Specifically: 1. Embrace the expansion of Community Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOCs) as an avenue to maintain a VA footprint in challenging medical markets without investing further in obsolete and unaffordable VA health care campuses. 2. Explore the potential to pilot facility-sharing partnerships between the VA and strained local health care systems to reduce costs by leveraging limited talent and resources. Personnel l Extend the term of the Under Secretary for Health (USH) to five years. Additionally, authority should be given to reappoint this individual for a second five-year term both to allow for continuity and to protect the USH from political transition. l Establish a Senior Executive Service (SES) position of VHA Care System Chief Information Officer (CIO), selected by and reporting to the chief of the VHA Care System with a dotted line to the VA CIO. l Identify a workflow process to bring wait times in compliance with VA MISSION Act–required time frames wherever possible. 1. Assess the daily clinical appointment load for physicians and clinical staff in medical facilities where wait times for care are well outside of the time frames required by the VA MISSION Act. 2. Require VHA facilities to increase the number of patients seen each day to equal the number seen by DOD medical facilities: approximately 19 patients per provider per day. Currently, VA facilities may be seeing as few as six patients per provider per day. 3. Consider a pilot program to extend weekday appointment hours and offer Saturday appointment options to veterans if a facility continues to demonstrate that it has excess capacity and is experiencing delays in the delivery of care for veterans. 4. Identify clinical services that are consistently in high demand but require cost-prohibitive compensation to recruit and retain talent, and examine exceptions for higher competitive pay.

Introduction

Moderate 60.4%
Pages: 679-681

— 646 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 3. Section 121 (developing and administering an education program that teaches veterans about their health care options available from the Department of Veterans Affairs). 4. Section 152 (returning the Office for Innovation of Care and Payment to the Office of Enterprise Integration with a joint governance process set up with the VHA). 5. Section 161 (overhauling Family Caregiver Program expansion, which has gone poorly, so that it focuses on consistency of eligibility and awareness that the most severely wounded or injured may require the program indefinitely). l Require the VHA to report publicly on all aspects of its operation, including quality, safety, patient experience, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness, using standards similar to those in the Medicare Accountable Care Organization program so that the government may monitor and achieve continuous improvement in the VA system more effectively. l Encourage VA Medical Centers to seek out relevant academic and private- sector input in their communities to improve the overall patient experience. Budget l Conduct an independent audit of the VA similar to the 2018 Department of Defense (DOD) audit to identify IT, management, financial, contracting, and other deficiencies. l Assess the misalignment of VHA facilities and rising infrastructure costs. The VHA operates 172 inpatient medical facilities nationally that are an average of 60 years old. Some of these facilities are underutilized and inadequately staffed. Facilities in certain urban and rural areas are seeing significant declines in the veteran population and strong competition for fresh medical staff. In 2018, Congress authorized an Asset Infrastructure Review (AIR) of national VHA medical markets to provide insight into where the VA health care budget should be responsibly allocated to serve veterans most effectively. However, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee lacked the political will to act on the White House’s nominations of commission members, and this ultimately led to termination of the AIR process. The next Administration should seek out agile, creative, and politically acceptable operational solutions to this aging infrastructure status quo,

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.