October, 20 2021, 10:47am EDT
Sanders Introduces Legislation to Expand Veterans Dental and Health Care
Ahead of a Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Wednesday introduced two bills to expand and improve comprehensive health care for veterans.
WASHINGTON
Ahead of a Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Wednesday introduced two bills to expand and improve comprehensive health care for veterans.
The Veterans Dental Care Eligibility Expansion and Enhancement Act of 2021 - co-sponsored by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) - and the Veterans State Eligibility Standardization Act of 2021 will ensure universal dental care coverage for all veterans through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and eliminate long-standing barriers to health care for veterans across the country.
"If a country is worth anything, it's in how we treat the people who put their lives on the line to defend us," said Sen. Sanders. "As the former chair of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, I have seen up close the pain, death, and despair caused by war and its aftermath. Honoring that extraordinary sacrifice and bravery is one of the most important commitments we have as a country. That means making sure our veterans and their families have access to the best and most comprehensive health care, including dental care, our country can provide. With this legislation, we will strengthen the VA health care system so that all veterans can get the care they were promised, and no veteran is left behind."
"This legislation will bolster the VA's whole health approach, expanding essential dental care access to all veterans enrolled in the VA system," said Sen. Blumenthal. "Veterans across the U.S. and Connecticut, including those in rural and underserved communities, deserve quality and affordable health care services. By opening new VA dental clinics, promoting dental health education, and recruiting dentists to work at the VA, the Veterans Dental Care Eligibility Expansion and Enhancement Act will ensure dental care is part of the preventative and emergency care services our nation's bravest can access."
"Dental care is health care, however, due to current VA eligibility restrictions, the vast majority of America's veterans are prevented from accessing this benefit - making it critical that we expand coverage," said Sen. Booker. "This important legislation would eliminate current restrictions to ensure that the VA has the necessary staff and facilities in all states to provide dental care to veterans. We owe our veterans a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid, and this legislation is a necessary step forward in honoring their service and sacrifice."
"Today, dental care is not treated like the vital health care it is and only a small fraction of veterans are eligible to receive dental care through the VA because of stringent eligibility requirements," said Sen. Gillibrand. "With the VA's Dental Insurance Program set to expire at the end of the year, now is the time to prioritize dental health care and pass the Veterans Dental Care Eligibility Expansion and Enhancement Act of 2021. This bill would help eliminate eligibility restrictions and make dental care more affordable and accessible to all veterans."
"Dental care is a key part of comprehensive health care, and an essential part of fulfilling our promise to holistically address the needs of veterans in Hawaii and across the country," said Sen. Hirono. "This legislation would make needed and overdue updates to the care that veterans can receive through VA."
"Our veterans have served our country with honor and dignity, and yet millions are locked out of critical VA benefits such as dental care due to strict eligibility restrictions at the agency," said Sen. Menendez. "Veterans in New Jersey and across the country deserve to have access to the resources and benefits they need to live healthy and productive lives after their military service, and that's why I am proud to be supporting this important piece of legislation that will expand access to dental care for millions of veterans and support them in maintaining good dental hygiene and overall health."
The VA has reported that out of the 9.2 million veterans enrolled in VA health care, only about 1.4 million are eligible for comprehensive dental care. However, in 2020, VA dental services managed the care of only 402,000 eligible veterans as well as an additional 61,000 due to medical necessity. Only 80,000 purchased dental insurance through the VA Dental Insurance Program and in 2020, the decrease in veteran enrollment and compensation and pension exams due to the pandemic created an estimated backlog of 2.5 million dental procedures.
The Veterans Dental Care Eligibility Expansion and Enhancement Act of 2021 will eliminate the current eligibility restrictions for VA dental care and expand eligibility to all veterans receiving VA health care. It will also work to address the shortage of dentists in the U.S. by incentivizing dental school enrollment and service to our nation's veterans, and ensure the VA maintains dental clinics in all states to meet the needs of veterans from all parts of the country.
Poor dental hygiene is directly linked to other chronic health care conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, upper respiratory disease, dementia, and diabetes, leading to increased overall health care costs. In 2016, Avalere estimated that if Medicare covered initial and ongoing gum disease treatment for beneficiaries with diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, it would save Medicare $63.5 billion over a decade. Each $1 of new spending from dental coverage saved approximately $10 in Medicare costs, primarily from reduced hospitalizations and emergency room visits.
The Veterans Dental Care Eligibility Expansion and Enhancement Act would ensure the VA educates veterans on their eligibility for dental care and the importance of dental hygiene for an individual's overall health; improve veterans' overall physical health; and provide a reduction in long-term taxpayer spending on VA health care.
In addition to Sens. Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Booker (D-N.J.), Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Menendez (D-N.J.), the Veterans Dental Care Eligibility Expansion and Enhancement Act of 2021 has the support of a wide array of veteran and health care organizations, including: The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), The American Heart Association, The American Legion, AMVETS, The Coalition of Veteran Organizations (CVO), Common Defense, Disabled American Veterans (DAV), Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), Justice in Aging, Military Officers Association of America (MOAA), Modern Military Association of America (MMAA), Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), and VoteVets.
Running parallel to the fight to guarantee veterans universal dental care is the effort to simplify and expand the eligibility process to receive health care through the VA. While more than 9 million veterans are enrolled in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), approximately 5.6 million veterans have no health insurance and are unable to get care at the VA. Currently, veterans face a complex set of requirements and enrollment processes to determine eligibility for health care coverage from the VA, including more than 3,000 different geographic-based income eligibility thresholds across the nation.
To simplify the system and ensure more veterans can get the care they need at the VA, the Veterans State Eligibility Standardization Act of 2021 will limit the number of geographic regions to one per state and set the income eligibility threshold in each state to the most generous in that state. This policy will continue to use Housing and Urban Development (HUD) metrics to determine the most generous income eligibility threshold in each state and set each state's eligibility threshold at 100% of the highest median income in each state. For the many brave veterans who fought to protect our nation and have been left with no affordable means of securing quality health care, this small administrative change will significantly expand eligibility, particularly for veterans in rural areas, to receive care through the VA.
The Veterans State Eligibility Standardization Act of 2021 is supported by the Coalition of Veteran Organizations (CVO), Common Defense, The American Legion (TAL), Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), and VoteVets.
The Veterans Dental Care Eligibility Expansion and Enhancement Act of 2021:
The Veterans State Eligibility Standardization Act of 2021:
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Susan Collins Ads Brag About $190 Million for Rural Hospitals. It’s a Band-Aid on the Gaping Wound She Helped Inflict
The Republican senator running for a sixth term has postured as a champion of rural healthcare, but the Medicaid cuts she voted to advance are set to devastate vulnerable communities in Maine and across the US.
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In recent weeks, Mainers have been inundated with ads touting Republican Sen. Susan Collins' role in securing passage of a $50 billion fund aimed at shoring up beleaguered rural healthcare systems across the US—including $190 million earmarked for her state.
But the ads, purchased by Collins' campaign directly and by the dark money group One Nation, neglect to mention a key fact: The Republican budget law that implements the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) also contains the largest cuts to Medicaid in the program's history, rendering the $50 billion fund a mere Band-Aid on a massive wound.
According to one analysis, the GOP law's estimated cuts to federal Medicaid spending in rural areas over the next decade will amount to nearly triple the RHTP's funding. Maine is expected to lose nearly $3 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the next 10 years due to the Republican law—a massive hit that the pro-Collins campaign ads predictably avoid.
Collins, who is running for a sixth term against Democratic nominee Graham Platner, emphasizes that she voted against final passage of the GOP budget legislation, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). But Collins cast a decisive procedural vote that allowed the bill, which also delivered massive tax breaks to the wealthy and large corporations, to advance to the Senate floor, where her Republican colleagues did the rest. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law last summer.
"Susan Collins is only bipartisan when it doesn't matter," declares a 30-second ad unveiled Wednesday by the Platner campaign, which highlighted the incumbent senator's vote to advance the OBBBA and pilloried her reputation as a "moderate."
The Republican law's Medicaid cuts, which total nearly $1 trillion, are expected to cost Maine hospitals $66 million per year in revenue and strip health coverage from tens of thousands of residents—projections that Collins' ads omit.
"Maine will be forced to offset budget holes caused by this bill by terminating coverage for families, eliminating essential health services, and cutting provider rates so drastically that doctors and hospitals are forced to close their doors—particularly in rural communities," the advocacy group Families USA warned in an analysis of the Republican budget measure. "Hospitals like Cary Medical Center and Northern Light AR Gould Hospital in Aroostook County, Northern Light Maine Coast Hospital in Hancock County, and Calais Community Hospital in Washington County will be at greater financial risk of closing due to Medicaid cuts in the bill."
"While more funding for rural healthcare is always welcome, political messaging about new funding cannot obscure the reality for states."
Nationwide, the impacts of the Medicaid cuts—which include new work requirements and other bureaucratic barriers—are expected to be devastating for years to come. A tracker maintained by Protect Our Care shows that more than 1,000 hospitals, clinics, wards, and nursing homes are "facing closure or cuts" following OBBBA's passage.
Maine Family Planning, the state's largest network of reproductive health clinics, was forced to end primary care services late last year due to the Republican budget law.
“Behind each pin is a story,” Anne Shoup, senior adviser to Protect Our Care, said Wednesday, referencing the markers on the group's hospital closure tracker. "Whether it’s an expectant mother losing access to prenatal care after the nearest rural hospital was forced to close its maternity ward, or seniors driving hours each way for care that used to be down the road, or people with disabilities facing gaps in caregiving that allow them to stay in their own homes, these pins represent our neighbors, our parents, and our kids. They deserve better than to have their healthcare gutted to write a check to the ultra-wealthy.”
The health policy organization KFF has said it is "highly unlikely that any state will receive more money from the rural health fund than it will lose" from Medicaid cuts and other federal policy changes, calling into question Collins' characterization of the RHTP money as transformative for Maine's rural healthcare system.
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As international climate talks backed by the United Nations wrapped up Thursday in Bonn, Germany, campaigners stressed that policymakers must do more to curb the influence of polluting industries if such negotiations are going to have any hope of helping the world bring the fossil fuel era to an end.
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The #JuneClimateMeetings further exposed the structural barriers slowing climate action: 🤝#ConsensusKillsAmbition, 🕴️Corporate influence,🪑Barriers to participation. It's high time for States to #FixTheUNFCCC.Read more in our statement: www.ciel.org/news/june-cl...
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— Center for International Environmental Law (@ciel.org) June 18, 2026 at 6:27 AM
Vandamme added that "effective multilateralism is the only way out of the climate crisis, and this process does not live up to that expectation."
Rallying under a "Friends of Science" banner, dozens of nations are calling out coordinated attacks by fossil fuel producers and the oil, gas, and coal industries on science that threatens their economic prospects.
“We see coordinated efforts to cast doubt on the best available science driven by a narrow set of interests, not by the needs of our people,” lead Panamanian negotiator Ana Aguilar said during a Wednesday press conference.
“We have seen this playbook before," she added. "Manufacture doubt, delay the response, and let the vulnerable people pay this bill.”
Lead Fijian negotiator Sivendra Michael put it more bluntly, telling reporters, "Anyone that is blocking references to science—they are not our friends."
There has been some progress. As CIEL noted:
It is encouraging that, after more than three decades, the UNFCCC has begun to acknowledge concerns around the corporate capture of the process. The open dialogue on transparency and integrity that happened in Bonn represents an important—but long overdue—step towards addressing the influence of polluting industries in the climate negotiations. This dialogue must be the start toward a meaningful, comprehensive policy to address corporate capture of climate negotiations. A climate process that remains vulnerable to obstruction and corporate influence cannot deliver the action this crisis demands.
Erika Lennon, CIEL's senior attorney, pointed to April's First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, as a hopeful sign. The Santa Marta conference, which was free of major polluters like the United States, China, Russia, and India, took aim at what climate defenders called the “shamefully weak” draft text—called the Multirão Decision—produced at last November’s COP30 in Brazil. The final document removed all mentions of fossil fuels amid pressure from oil and gas-producing nations like the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, and the presence of a record number of industry lobbyists.
“The Santa Marta Conference demonstrated that a fossil fuel phaseout is not out of reach," Lennon said Thursday. "But Bonn showed that the institutions meant to deliver that accountability remain constrained by outdated rules and undue influence from polluting interests."
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"We witness not only a massive fossil fuel crisis but a vast upward transfer of wealth built on instability of fossil fuel markets and pain," said an expert at 350.org.
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US President Donald Trump’s war with Iran may finally be reaching a close. But consumers and businesses around the world will continue to pay the price in the months ahead as still-elevated energy costs funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to fossil fuel giants.
That’s according to a report from the environmental group 350.org released Thursday, following Trump’s signing of a memorandum of understanding with Iran this week to begin the process of formally ending a war that has sent global oil prices skyrocketing and saddled ordinary people with record fuel prices.
The group estimated that just 110 days of war resulted in the transfer of an additional $374 billion from consumers and businesses into the coffers of oil and gas companies beyond what would have been expected had the war never been launched.
And while Trump claims his agreement to end the war this week will avert an “economic catastrophe,” there will likely still be tremendous pain even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens promptly.
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This, the group said, is a conservative estimate, as it does not even take into account knock-on effects. The war will ultimately end up costing much more when factoring in inflation across the rest of the economy, resulting from higher fuel costs or fertilizer shortages caused by the strait's closure, which has affected food prices.
It also does not take into account the resulting effects on economic output or employment as rising costs and lower consumer spending force companies to tighten their belts.
"The oil and gas industry is draining billions from people and businesses on the back of a war that has killed thousands and pushed millions toward poverty and hunger," said Andreas Sieber, head of political Strategy at 350.org.
"Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens tomorrow, we should expect prices to remain above pre-crisis levels," he said. "We witness not only a massive fossil fuel crisis but a vast upward transfer of wealth built on instability of fossil fuel markets and pain."
While the war has brought it into starker relief, previous reports from 350.org have shown that even if the US had never attacked Iran, the continued global dependence on fossil fuels was resulting in trillions of dollars of avoidable costs each year, including $9.3 trillion to mitigate climate-related damages and air pollution-related deaths each year, costs that disproportionately fall on the world's poorest.
In order to alleviate economic strain from the war, Sieber said, "governments should tax these excess profits now and use the revenues to protect people, cut bills, and rapidly deploy renewables that make households and small businesses less vulnerable to the next fossil fuel shock.”
Estimates of inflation also do not account for how the war has heightened global instability and poverty, which will require additional resources for humanitarian relief efforts. In late April, the United Nations Development Program estimated that even if the conflict had ended then, more than 32 million people worldwide would be pushed into economic precarity.
This is not to mention the resources that will need to be expended to address the harms caused by the war itself.
In exchange for negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, a portion of the memorandum of understanding requires the US to work with "regional partners," presumably other Persian Gulf allies, to scrounge up at least $300 billion to help Iran pay for reconstruction and economic development after the country was devastated by American and Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure and millions were displaced.
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