Providing help to Maine Veterans’ Homes
By U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud
(D-Maine)
As a country, we have an obligation to ensure that our military service members are taken care of when they come home.
Each day, veterans’ homes nationwide provide crucial care and support to those who sacrificed everything in service to their country. While working to improve the daily lives of veterans through physical, occupational, and speech-language therapy, these homes also offer full residential care to veterans who are unable to care for themselves.
Currently, Maine Veterans’ Homes, a public, non-profit system established by the government of the State of Maine, offers 640 skilled nursing, long-term care nursing, and domiciliary beds at locations in Augusta, Bangor, Caribou, Scarborough, South Paris and Machias. These facilities include not only a variety of living amenities, but an assortment of activities and events, routine visits, medical assistance, education, and end-of-life care for veterans and their family members. Most importantly, Maine Veterans’ Homes have a reputation of making the lives of those they care for as enjoyable as possible while treating them with dignity and respect.
Unfortunately, through no fault of their own, veterans’ homes in Maine and across the country have recently faced significant financial shortfalls that threaten their ability to treat veterans and remain open.
That’s why I recently introduced a bipartisan bill that will ensure that severely disabled and elderly veterans are able to get the care they need at state veterans’ homes. I introduced this bill to address the flawed implementation of a new Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) program that was designed to improve long-term care for the most severely disabled veterans, but instead has limited reimbursements to state veterans’ homes. The system does not provide many state veterans’ homes, including those in Maine, with adequate reimbursements for the actual cost of caring for disabled veterans.
In March of last year, I held a House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Health hearing on this issue and invited Kelley Kash, the CEO of Maine Veterans’ Homes, to testify about how these flawed regulations impact Maine. During the hearing, Kash quantified the new system’s impact based on the demographics of Maine’s veteran population. He said if they were to admit every service member that reasonably could seek admission to Maine Veterans’ Homes, the organization would sustain a net loss of between $8 and $16 million per year and be bankrupt within one and a half to three years.
This outcome is completely unacceptable and would fail to live up to our shared commitment to those that served. The bill I introduced would address this problem by requiring the VA to enter into contracts with state veterans’ homes in order to accurately reimburse them for the cost of the care they provide. I am proud to say that not only is Congressman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), the chairman of the full Veterans’ Affairs Committee, a cosponsor of my bill, but that the bill is scheduled to be considered by the committee during a July 25th hearing. I am also pleased to report that the Senate has begun to move on this issue.
While I have been disappointed that it has taken so long for the VA to address the issue, I’m glad they now agree that legislation is necessary to fix it. I’m hopeful that the bill to address it moves through Congress quickly and gets to the President’s desk for his signature as soon as possible. With no exception, our veterans deserve our continued support and access to the best possible care.
