Martin Heinrich Presses VA Secretary On Efforts To Help Veterans With Substance Use Disorders

4 months ago

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Transcript

00:00 First, I just want to thank Senator Hoeven for his comments on mental health in particular.

00:05 That is an incredible challenge, especially in big rural states like mine.

00:11 Secretary, welcome back.

00:12 It is always good to see you.

00:13 I want to ask you about the partial claim payment program.

00:19 When that ended relatively abruptly, it was really destabilizing for a lot of veterans

00:25 in New Mexico.

00:26 Obviously, we are in a very different interest rate environment than we were at the beginning

00:30 of the pandemic.

00:34 What steps is the VA taking to ensure that folks impacted by that will be included in

00:39 the service or purchasing program that has been stood up?

00:43 We are reaching out to veterans who our data shows are struggling.

00:51 We are communicating also as aggressively as we can to veterans to make sure that they

00:55 are aware that we are standing up a new support program when the current moratorium expires

01:08 at the end of this month, end of May.

01:13 We think that, and by the way, as a general matter, we are tracking veteran performance

01:20 on their VA mortgages because we have a whole series of programs not even associated with

01:27 what we call the VASP, which is what will roll out when the moratorium ends.

01:33 We want to make sure that vets can avail themselves of through our debt management center.

01:39 We are trying to communicate to vets individually.

01:42 We are trying to communicate more generally to vets.

01:46 The new VASP program, which we have kept the committee up to date on and will develop the

01:52 implementation targets more aggressively over the course of the next four weeks, will allow

01:57 us to make sure that veterans struggling do not lose their homes and come up with a more

02:03 manageable debt picture over time.

02:08 I know Senator Collins raised the highly rural transportation grant.

02:13 I was pleased to be able to work to include some additional funding for that in FY24.

02:22 My understanding, because I was not here when she asked her question, is that you may have

02:25 referenced a legislative proposal in that area.

02:28 Do you want to expound on that?

02:32 We would like to -- you and I, you are the first person to have raised this with me,

02:38 and that is what I said to Senator Collins when we talked about it privately recently.

02:43 New Mexico and Maine are uniquely poorly positioned based on the definition of highly rural, as

02:52 fewer than seven people per square mile.

02:57 We would like to change that in statute.

03:00 We have some proposals on how we would do that.

03:05 We would couple that with a commensurate increase in funding.

03:11 Right now, we have too few counties who can participate.

03:16 I am certainly not going to speak for Senator Collins, but I suspect we would both look

03:21 forward to working with you on that front.

03:24 You talked a little bit about substance use treatment or substance use disorders.

03:30 One of the challenges we see in New Mexico is that folks who want to treat their substance

03:38 use disorder are having real challenges getting access to the medications that they are prescribed

03:44 by their doctors, particularly buprenorphine.

03:50 It has been -- literally, people cannot get their prescriptions filled.

03:54 There are a number of reasons for this, because this is a highly tracked -- these medications

04:00 are highly tracked.

04:01 I would love for you to look into that, because we want to make sure that our vets who want

04:06 to get treatment can get the medications that they are being prescribed.

04:10 It is a major priority for us to increase medically assisted treatment.

04:18 If there is -- let's definitely dig into it.

04:22 There's no reason a veteran who is struggling and wants to take those steps, let's make

04:28 sure we are there for them when they do it.

04:30 We have had real challenges with some of the big chain pharmacies just stocking those medications.

04:36 We can expand on -- we will get together and expand on why that is.

04:42 We're not going to make headway on this if we can't get folks the treatment.

04:45 We're really proud of our medically assisted treatment options.

04:50 That should not be reliant on any of those big boxes.

04:53 The question is maybe there's a mail order pharmacy issue for us.

04:58 Let me dig into that.

04:59 You have my attention on this.

05:01 If there's one vet who is struggling to get that, that's too many.

05:04 >> Look forward to working with you.

05:06 Thank you.

05:07 >> Senator Fischer.

05:08 >> Thank you, Madam Chairman.

05:11 Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here today.

05:13 I just want to start off with thank you for all the great work we're seeing the VA do

05:19 in Nebraska, and especially over this last year.

05:23 Thanks.

05:24 Last year during this hearing, we talked about needing to invest in the --

Martin Heinrich Presses VA Secretary On Efforts To Help Veterans With Substance Use Disorders

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