Delegate James Moylan penned a letter to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Dennis McDonough, inquiring why the DVA only provides airfare for Guam veterans to the state of Hawaii, but not any jurisdiction further.

Under current DVA policy, veterans residing in Guam who may need specialized medical treatment that is not available would qualify for airfare to Hawaii covered by the DVA.

However, if that treatment is unavailable in Hawaii, the veteran must pay for their airfare to any other 49 states.

And under the same policy, a veteran residing in any of the 50 states, including Hawaii, were to need a certain medical treatment not available in their respective state, the DVA would pay for their airfare to another state where that treatment is available.

This begs the question of why a veteran residing in Guam can’t get their airfare covered for treatment not available in Hawaii.

“This travel policy continues a long script of inequities our veterans face. While I understand the cost factors, the reality is that Guam has among the highest numbers of both military enlistments and veterans per capita, and this is a distinction that the DVA has not truly fathomed. Our distance from the contiguous states needs to be considered when establishing certain policies, and if the intent of this travel policy is to provide a veteran access to care which they need, then it shouldn’t matter where that location is, and the DVA should shoulder the airfare costs, as they would for any veteran residing in one of the 50 states,” stated Moylan.

The Committee is pursuing several other concerns with the DVA and Guam’s veterans, including the possible need of conducting an oversight hearing in the near future to determine why the DVA continues to fail the veterans residing in Guam.

Moylan said, “Sometimes it literally requires an act of Congress for things to shake. I want to thank HVAC Chairman, Mike Bost, for his recent visit and commitment to Guam’s veterans. We have a litany of inquiries forthcoming, including the questioning of this policy. As noted to the committee, we didn’t want the CODEL here for the sake of just being here just to understand Guam’s situation, as we have seen in the past, but we wanted to ensure there were commitments for action items and deliverables, and we are seeing just that.”