00:00Senator Blackburn.
00:01Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:03I appreciate that, and I do appreciate that we're taking up the Access Act
00:08and that we have a pilot on mental health that will look more comprehensively,
00:15if you will, at what we could do with community care.
00:21One of the things that has concerned me, and I've worked for years on community care
00:27and opening up the opportunity for community care.
00:33And as we have worked on this issue, one of the things that we have found is that about 80% of the VA workforce,
00:4180% is unionized workforce, and they continue to push against provisions like community care,
00:52expanding the Access Act.
00:56And our goal should be to make health care convenient and to provide more options for our veterans.
01:09And to me, taking the Access Act to permanence is something we should do to honor that sacrifice that the veterans have done.
01:20Having pilots on community care in areas other than just mental health is something that we should do.
01:31As you mentioned, you have someone that is six hours from a veterans clinic.
01:36Tennessee is a long state.
01:39Upper East Tennessee is closer to the Canadian border than it is to Memphis, Tennessee.
01:44And having these veterans, giving them the ability to go in their community to get the care that they need is something that we should do.
01:58So, yes, permanence on access, more broadly allowing community care so that veterans can get what they need, when they need it.
02:09And I think it is imperative that we stop letting the unions dictate what they want.
02:17We saw during COVID, we had VBA staff that was required to show up only two days out of a two-week work period in the office, two days in person.
02:30And in health care, we heard from the secretary, they only had to show up five days.
02:35And then we wonder why we have such a backlog.
02:39So, I am supporting the Access Act.
02:43I think we should push this further and make it permanent so veterans know that they are not going to have to guess if something is going to continue.
02:54They're going to know what they're going to get.
02:57Senator Blackburn, thank you.
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