Fulfilling Our Commitment to Veterans

"We owe it to those who have stood watch on freedom's walls, to cherish, honor, and reward their service, and to see to it that our veterans are secure, just as they secured our freedom." - Al Gore

As a former enlisted man in Vietnam, Al Gore understands the sacrifice that America's veterans have made in defense of our nation. We have an unwavering duty to take care of those who have protected and defended us. And we have a strong national interest in fulfilling the commitments we've made to our veterans - recruitment to our all-volunteer armed services depends on it. Health care is a right that our veterans have earned, and as President, Al Gore will expand upon the Clinton Administration's health care successes by ensuring that we continue to improve the quality of veterans' health care - especially those with service-connected injuries or conditions - and the health care of their survivors even as we improve the accuracy and timeliness of its delivery. We need to make sure that disability compensation and other veterans' survivor's benefits keep pace with increases in the cost of living. As President, Al Gore will direct the Department of Veterans Affairs to serve America's veterans and their families with the utmost dignity and compassion to be their advocate in ensuring that they receive first-rate medical, disability, rehabilitation, employment, education, home-loan, and survivor's benefits and services.

EXPANDING QUALITY HEALTH CARE FOR VETERANS: Quality health care is a right that our veterans have earned. As President, Al Gore will do everything possible to make sure that veterans receive the quality benefits - including those for health care - which they deserve in a timely fashion. This includes expanding the range and access of health care services, and improving outpatient care and long-term health benefits.

• Ensuring Proper Funding for Veterans Health Care: As part of the Clinton-Gore Administration, Al Gore has fought for increases in funding for veterans health care in order to reduce waiting times, expand outpatient care, and improve long-term care in the VA system. These increases make it possible to hire more doctors, open more community-based outpatient clinics, and renovate our existing facilities within the VA health care system. Furthermore, this money will shorten the time that veterans have to wait at VA medical centers for their treatment, which will allow us to improve the overall quality of medical care for veterans. Al Gore will work to provide enhanced services for disabled veterans including those with spinal injuries. These are steps in the right direction. Al Gore has supported increases in veterans' health totaling over $ 2 billion for FY's 2000 and 2001.
• Expanding the Range of Health Care Services to Veterans: Al Gore will fight to build on the successes of the Veterans Millennium Health Care and Benefits Act signed in 1999. This Act will improve extended-care services for veterans, including access to services like adult day health care and geriatric evaluations. It also provides the first-ever guarantee of VA nursing-home care - for those needing care for service-related disabilities. These are important steps toward the goal of making better long-term care available for those who need it. This law will also help us address the challenge of providing care to our nation's homeless veterans.
• Improving Access to Health Care for American's Veterans: Al Gore will fight to expand veterans' access to quality health care. He will work to improve the types of service and expanding the number of points of service to better reflect the needs of the population. Since 1994, the VA has expanded its health care system to more than 600 outpatient clinics - decreasing the distance veterans have to travel and the time veterans have to wait to get care. As a result, the number of veterans treated has increased by 18-20 percent per year. Al Gore will continue this trend.
• Improving Outpatient Care: Al Gore recognizes that the needs of the veteran population are changing dramatically and that veterans care is moving from an inpatient focus to an outpatient, community-based focus. By improving outpatient care, the VA can redirect its resources to provide care for more veterans than ever before. Al Gore will work to continue the VA's progress in opening more outpatient clinics around the country.
• Improving the Delivery of Health Care Services for Veterans: The Clinton-Gore Administration has pioneered ways to improve the delivery of health care services. The VA now uses electronic data entry prescriptions to ensure accuracy in the dispensing of medications. And the VA has expanded access to preventative care, including making sure that women veterans are screened for breast and cervical cancer, and elderly veterans receive needed immunizations, at rates higher than those for comparable groups in the private sector.
• Increasing Long-Term Health Care Benefits: Al Gore has fought to increase long-term health care benefits for all Americans, and especially for the men and women who have served America in our armed forces. He fought to increase funding to address the issue of long-term care availability for our aging veterans - including expanding access to the VA's long-term care services and making them more available to veterans, particularly, home-and community-based care. He will work to expand access to nursing home care, assisted living and home and community-based care as well as adult day health care and hospice services.
• Improving Health Insurance for Military Retirees: Al Gore is committed to fully funding the military health system and to improving the TRICARE managed health program by cutting waiting time and expanding access. He also is strongly in favor of prescription drug benefits for over-65 retirees through the TRICARE system, a program matched by his proposal to extend prescription drug benefits to Medicare recipients as well.

• Working for Programs That Help Veterans: Al Gore has long been a strong supporter of measures to assist and create economic opportunity for veterans. The Clinton-Gore Administration signed the Veterans Employment Opportunity Act to preserve, extend, and protect veterans' preference for federal jobs. Additionally, the Administration, through the direct funding efforts and assistance of the Department of Labor, has helped an estimated 500,000 veterans find jobs. And a joint effort by the Departments of Labor and Veterans Affairs provided job assistance to 130,000 disabled veterans. As president, Al Gore will continue to fund programs like these, and search for innovative ways to provide veterans - especially disabled veterans - the training and tools they need to succeed.
• Al Gore has long been an advocate for Americans with disabilities. An original Senate co-sponsor of the Americans With Disabilities Act, Al Gore is committed to ensuring that all Americans - including the 30 million working-age adults with disabilities - have the chance to become full partners in the American Dream. As President, Gore will increase home and community-based care, expand opportunities for people with disabilities to work and learn, ensure that they have access to quality health care as they move into work, and preserve and strengthen Social Security and Medicare. Gore also supports efforts to make personal assistance services and supports more available to people with disabilities in their homes and communities. [LINK TO AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES PAGE]
• Supporting Educational Opportunities for Veterans: Al Gore has worked his entire career to give veterans the educational opportunities that they have earned, and as President, he will continue to support programs that educate our nation's veterans.
• Al Gore understands that education benefits have been an important recruitment tool for our nation's military forces and that, for more than a half century, GI Bill education assistance programs have helped America build its world leadership.
• Currently, Montgomery GI Bill benefits cover about half of the average cost of state-supported colleges and universities, but that percentage is expected to decrease over the next 10 years. As President, Al Gore will support making educational benefits more robust, taking into account the increased costs associated with higher education costs, and will also look to provide more flexible ways for veterans to use these benefits.
• Providing Small Business Opportunities to Veterans: Al Gore would build on the successful efforts of the Clinton-Gore Administration to provide small business opportunities to veterans. In 1999, the Administration signed the Veterans Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development Act which will provide assistance to veterans to maintain, grow, or establish their own business.
• Eliminating Homelessness Among Veterans: In spite of our strong economy, our nation's veterans continue to be a major component of the homeless population. On any given night approximately one-third of the homeless population has served in the military. As President, Al Gore will continue to pursue positive policies that are effective in addressing the needs of homeless veterans.
• Al Gore pledges that America's prosperity will be shared by all veterans, including those who are homeless. The Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program (HVRP) has been a highly successful program, and Al Gore would expand it even further.
• Al Gore advocates solutions that utilize the resources and talents of several federal agencies, e.g., the Department of Labor, the VA, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As President, Al Gore will continue to encourage community partnerships and will use his office to encourage and support ongoing initiatives utilizing the resources of the federal government, state and local governments, VSOs and community-based organizations. Al Gore will work to end homelessness among our nation's veterans.
• Improving Benefit Delivery System: Vice President Gore supports improving the current benefit delivery system to America's veterans, especially for compensation, pension, housing, and education benefits. The Administration's budget for FY 2001 provides for an increase of 7% of frontline workers devoted to compensation and benefits claims processing. The recent passage of the VA Claims Assistance Act should help make the benefit claims process more rapid and more fair to veterans. As President, Al Gore supports eliminating the current backlog, as well as improving the quality of the benefit claims process by pursing new information technology solutions that will eliminate the paper-intensive process, which is the fundamental cause of delayed inaccurate claims resolution.

Source: Al Gore for President 2000 Web Site