Paralyzed Veterans of America Blog

On May 23, the United States Senate voted 92-5 for the VA MISSION Act. The bill is now headed to President Trump’s desk for signature. The House of Representatives passed the bill on May 16, by a vote of 347-70. This historic legislation will reform care in the community, assess VA’s infrastructure, and finally, correct the inequality of the VA Caregiver Program.

"Unmasking [Administrative Evil],” University of San Diego business ethics professor George Reed explained, “occurs when the harmful effects and full scope of wrong becomes widely known and the evil is named." In other words, there is no more "just doing one's job" in a broken government system once the consequences of doing so have been exposed to the public and the immorality of such actions, in retrospect, is clear.

As I watched Dr. Ben Carson’s interview on The Dave Ramsey Show, where he suggested that “we don’t need a Department of Veterans Affairs,” and that “the Department of Veterans Affairs should be folded in under the Department of Defense,” it became apparent to myself and anyone else who understands how the two agencies work that Dr. Carson should have been given a crash course on their respective missions before asserting his view on how we need to fix programs and services intended to help veterans. Hopefully, the following will serve this purpose.

The Women Veterans and Families Health Services Act of 2015, introduced by Senator Patty Murray last February, would have ended the 23-year ban on providing veterans with in-vitro fertilization (IVF) options; a ban that essentially limits — even eliminates in many cases — a veteran's ability to bear or produce a child despite suffering the consequences of an improvised explosive device (IED) blast or a sniper's life-changing bullet.