Collins, King Sign Letter Urging Secretary of Veterans Affairs to Support ARCH Program

Statement

U.S. Senators Susan Collins, Angus King, and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) have sent a letter to Robert McDonald, Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, urging him to provide support for the crucial Access Received Closer to Home (ARCH) program for veterans who live in rural communities.

In the letter, the senators stated, "ARCH provides medical care for veterans living in rural areas or for those who are burdened with long wait times for services….According to congressionally mandated reports to the House and Senate Committees on Veterans Affairs, more than 90 percent of veterans participating in ARCH are overwhelmingly satisfied with their access to care and the medical services they receive from the participating community providers."

ARCH ensures that participating veterans, who often have a difficult time accessing care through the regular VA health care system, can receive care closer to where they live. One of the five locations for the pilot program is in Caribou, Maine, which has a long-standing partnership with Cary Medical Center.

Without this partnership, veterans in northern Maine would have to travel approximately 600 miles round trip to access care at the Togus VA Hospital in Augusta, ME. This can be especially daunting during Maine's long, snowy winter months, as Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) member Peter Miesburger recently attested. Peter Miesburgur was able to use the Arch Program for emergency surgery for a broken hip. Had the ARCH program not been in place, he would have had to endure a 500-mile roundtrip ambulance ride to Togus. The ride would have taken more than eight hours, over bumpy, winter roads, while he was in extreme pain. Often veterans and their families are forced to stay overnight and miss work as a result of the distance they are forced to travel to receive care. In addition to eliminating long and difficult travel, ARCH has also been extraordinarily successful in reducing wait times for veterans and providing access to care in veterans' own communities.

Senators Collins recently spoke from the Senate Floor urging her colleagues to support the FY 2016 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, a bipartisan bill that would fund critical programs supporting our nation's service members and veterans, including the ARCH program. Specifically, the bill contains $270 million in funding for ARCH. In May of this year, with Senator Collins' support, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed this legislation with a strong, bipartisan vote of 21 to 9. The legislation is awaiting final passage in the Senate.

Senator King and Senator Collins have written several letters to officials at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as to Congressional leadership, requesting continued support for the ARCH program. In 2014, Senator Collins and Senator King supported legislation that implemented significant reforms at the VA and created the Choice Program, a pilot initiative based in part on the success of ARCH.

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