Annie Kuster

We have created these boxes where you start checking and it creates a problem.

This change reflects our belief that veterans should not be denied disability compensation or access to VA health care because their symptoms may vary.

Well, it appears to me that this is deja vu all over again. We are revisiting where we were with the Vietnam veterans.

I want to protect future troops. I want to know what is happening.

In New Hampshire alone, we had last year 420 opioid related deaths, up from 326 the year before.

You know, this is a big issue. I do not need to remind anyone in the audience from New Hampshire this now polls as the number one issue in New Hampshire for voters and constituents in terms of their concern above even the economy and jobs.

I think it is definitely a critical component.

The Granite State spends only $8 per capita on treatment for substance abuse.

We need to make sure that people have access to treatment, to lifelong recovery, and, of course, we need to support our law enforcement.

Well, thank you, Chairman Coffman, and thank you for being with us here in New Hampshire.

I have also been involved with Congressman Guinta and our bipartisan task force to combat the heroin epidemic.

I was proud to join Congressman Guinta in helping to introduce, and I believe Congressman Coffman as well, the Jason Simcakoski Promise Act, which would help improve opioid prescription practices at the VA.

We have got to do better.

We will not solve the opioid use epidemic in New Hampshire or in the country or help our veterans without dedicated and coordinated efforts.

The good news is that the VA has shown success in reducing the amount of opioids prescribed to veterans, but I share the chair's concern that without access to effective alternative treatments and therapies to manage chronic pain, access…

There is growing awareness that the long-term prescription of opioids to manage chronic pain can have severe and sometimes tragic consequences.

Can you speak right into the mike?

One of the concerns that I have is reports across the country that some veterans with chronic pain who have their opioid prescriptions reduced have not been given sufficient support services.

Today I rise to honor a group of men who played a crucial and unique role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Army's 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, also known as the Ghost Army, used tactical deception to divert enemy troops…

I want to also commend you on your leadership on the heroin crisis, and just remind my colleagues that we have a co-chaired bipartisan task force to combat the heroin epidemic in particularly rural economies.

This happens to us in energy and it is happening to us in the cost of feed so that the equation between the price for milk and the cost of feed, we are being squeezed very, very hard in New England and in New Hampshire in particular.

We need to change the incentives to try to keep people in that program.

My goal here is two-fold. One is to make sure that we have a sufficient understanding to help the veterans from the Gulf War era.

I was told that I had the lungs of a 90-year-old smoker.

So, add 25 years, we're coming up on this cohort of veterans being 50 years or older, and I'm wondering, is there any action being undertaken by the VA--or could we encourage you to do that--where we would be providing lung cancer…