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We need to ramp up healthcare for our veterans

It’s Veterans Day 2022 and we want to focus on health care for the men and women who wear or wore our country’s military uniforms.

Active duty military and veterans do and have sacrificed for our country.

The pandemic, meanwhile, has strained our nation’s healthcare system.

Have you had to wait for an appointment or outpatience service lately?

We know the Veterans Administration hospitals are strained, too.

It’s incumbent upon our elected leaders to work to insure our active duty citizens and veterans don’t have excessive or unreasonable delays or get any second-rate service in getting medical attention when needed and for prevention.

We read a report in MetroWest Daily News recently where the VA is adding new facilities.

Yes, building new VA clinics and hospitals is a welcome to improve health care services to veterans. And as MetroWest’s Kristine Bostek wrote recently, another strategy is employing innovative care models that have been proven to work in the private healthcare market and can be married to the existing VA system.

One is the Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE). PACE programs work to keep older Americans with complex, chronic conditions safe and healthy while living independently in their own homes. PACE enrollees typically receive care at home and in a PACE center. Such care can include primary care, therapies, meals, socialization, medication management, transportation and any other care or service needed to maintain the highest level of functioning.

Ninety-five percent of enrollees are able to live in the community, outside a nursing home, with the support of PACE. And studies show that PACE and programs like it result in improved outcomes.

Congress is working on legislation (introduced earlier this year) to marry PACE programs and VA Medical Centers.

It is called the “Elizabeth Dole Home and Community Based Services for Veterans and Caregivers Act,” named for the former senator whose late husband, Bob Dole, was also a U.S. senator and a wounded hero in World War II.

Given what our military veterans do, have done and endured, they deserve access to the most innovative and successful healthcare strategies we have. Congress should pass the Dole Act.

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