Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of my amendment, amendment No. 20, to Chairman Miller's VA Accountability First and Appeals Modernization Act. My amendment would add hearing aid specialists to the list of medical providers at the VA, allowing veterans access to timely hearing aid adjustments while still providing them with the same quality of care. I come from rural America. One of the issues that we come across is that many of our veterans have hearing issues and--by the way, hearing and audiology issues are increasing at a rate of 10 percent per year in the VA--it takes a long time to get an appointment with an audiologist. Once they get that appointment with the audiologist and they get a hearing aid, oftentimes they have to come back to the audiologist, waiting 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks for that appointment to get that hearing aid adjusted and fitted. Or if something goes wrong, they have to wait another 4 weeks to go back to get it refitted and fixed. So what this amendment would do is allow for our veterans to use hearing aid specialists, oftentimes in their own community, getting quick access to care so that they can hear. It is also going to free up our audiologists to do the more serious work that is necessary with our veterans. We are in a scenario where not only are we going to save money, but we are also going to be able to provide better quality care to our veterans.…”