This story originally published March 18, 2021 and was updated March 19 to reflect that the Save Lives Act passed both the House and Senate and March 25 after President Joe Biden signed the bill into law.
President Joe Biden signed a bill into law on Wednesday that expands coronavirus vaccine access at the Department of Veterans Affairs to all veterans, their caregivers and some family members.
The legislation passed the Senate unanimously on last week and passed by unanimous consent in the House last Friday. The Save Lives bill builds on legislation that passed the House last week, signaling broad support in Congress for expanding vaccine access through VA.
The Save Lives Act specifically provides no-cost COVID-19 vaccinations to all veterans, veterans living abroad relying on the Foreign Medical Program, veteran spouses, caregivers and Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs (CHAMPVA) recipients, as available. Veterans enrolled in VA health care would still receive priority.
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The legislation also urges the Department of Health and Human Services to increase VA's vaccine allocation based on the dramatically increased eligibility pool. The legislation makes roughly 24 million more people eligible for vaccines at VA, and the department will need about 400,000 more doses per week to meet that new demand.
The House earlier this month passed the VA Vaccine Act, which would expand vaccine access for veterans, including those living abroad, and many of their caregivers, but did not include spouses. The Save Lives Act built on the VA Vaccine Act, but expanded eligibility even further.
Before the Save Lives Act was signed into law, only veterans enrolled in VA care were eligible to receive the vaccine from a VA facility, along with caregivers enrolled in its Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers.
VA currently cares for roughly 9.5 million veterans, and the United States is home to more than 18 million total veterans. About half of all VA patients are older than 65, a population at elevated risk for infection, according to the CDC.
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"Vaccines are our best shot at ending this pandemic," Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester, D-Montana, said in a statement last week, adding that lawmakers' goal is to provide free vaccinations to "every veteran, spouse, child and caregiver at VA."
“Military service is family service, and it is why the VA and this committee aim to care for both veterans and their families,” committee ranking member Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, said. "While the VA will continue to prioritize vaccinating VHA-enrolled veterans with its allocation of the COVID-19 vaccine, this legislation will help further protect our veterans and their families.”
VA has the capacity to deliver 300,000 to 600,000 vaccine doses per week, Acting Undersecretary for Health Dr. Richard Stone told Congress recently, but severely limited supply had frustrated the department's efforts to deliver more vaccines. Some VA Medical Centers had also run out of vaccines completely, according to department communications. Over the past month, VA has seen a significant increase in its supply of vaccine doses as distribution ramps up nationwide. It's unclear whether the department will see another major increase in supply now that it has many more eligible veterans and family members to vaccinate.
"VA has proven itself as one the most effective vaccinators in the nation— but it’s clear VA needs additional authority to continue leading this effort to get as many shots into arms as possible," House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Takano, D-California, said last week. "The strength of VA’s internal healthcare delivery system and the Department’s successful role in national vaccination efforts makes this expansion possible, but I know this is a heavy lift. That’s why this expansion must be contingent on having adequate supply of the vaccine."
While VA has the capacity to administer more vaccines than it had been receiving, Stone said massive healthcare system faces major challenges shipping vaccines to rural and remote areas, a major concern for lawmakers. But the department has also detailed several success stories, including using smaller private contracted aircraft to deliver vaccines to remote areas of Montana and Alaska.
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Emergency authorization for the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which does not require the stringent cooling of the Pfizer and Moderna two-dose vaccines, also greatly increases the department's ability to deliver vaccines to more remote areas. As of March 16, the department had administered more than 34,000 J&J vaccine and 3.38 million total vaccine doses of all types to veterans.
VA has provided vaccines to more than 1.35 million people total as of March 16, and fully vaccinated more than 1.09 million veterans, nearly 250,000 VA staff and 11,000 federal workers.
Each medical center within the sprawling department -- America's largest healthcare system -- has a different supply of vaccines depending on need, and is distributing them to different priority groups, including those 75 and older, 65 and older, those with pre-existing conditions putting them at greater risk and those who are essential workers. More and more medical centers, though, have opened eligibility up to veterans of all ages and are holding mass vaccination clinics. As of March 18, however, VA had not opened up eligibility to veterans of all ages across the system yet.
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Department leaders have emphasized VA's effort to distribute the vaccine doses equitably to veterans of color, a population disproportionately affected by the pandemic.
VA leaders said the department had not seen racial or ethnic disparities in vaccinations so far. Among vets 75 and older, 25% of white, 28% of Hispanic and 30% of Black veterans have been vaccinated, Stone told lawmakers in recent weeks.
As of March 18, VA recorded fewer than 4,000 active cases of the virus departmentwide, and 407 patient hospitalized because of the virus as of last week, the lowest levels since early October 2020. Nearly 11,000 VA patients have died because of the virus and 135 VA employees. But the rates of patients and staff deaths have decreased significantly as cases and hospitalizations have decreased over recent weeks. More than 500 VA patients have died in March, compared to more than 1,400 in February and more than 2,400 in January.
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Reach Abbie Bennett: abbie@connectingvets.com or @AbbieRBennett.
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