Staten Island Reporter

Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis has announced the passage of the Senator Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act. This bipartisan legislation aims to enhance healthcare, benefits, and services at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for veterans and their families.

Malliotakis emphasized her support for the bill, stating: "As someone who represents a large veteran population and VA medical facilities, I'm pleased to see the House pass this critical legislation to improve health care services for our veterans, their caregivers and their families. This bill will address many of the issues raised in our quarterly veterans roundtables, including expanding economic opportunities for our veterans, making mental health care and addiction treatment more accessible, providing housing assistance for homeless vets, and increasing transparency at the VA. Not only did I cosponsor this bill, but I worked in tandem with Elizabeth Dole to advocate for its passage. I'm pleased this bipartisan effort is moving forward to take meaningful action and honor our commitment to those who've served our nation."

The act includes several key initiatives such as outreach to veterans about community care programs, establishing a pilot program to improve administration of care at VA medical facilities, expanding mental health support to family caregivers, improving home health programs and assisted living services, planning timely scheduling of appointments at VA medical facilities, supporting mobile mammography services for veterans, providing more educational assistance to beneficiaries of the GI Bill, expanding housing loans to certain veterans, covering funeral and burial expenses for certain veterans, and allocating funds to provide homeless veterans with bedding, shelter food hygiene items blankets rideshare to medical appointments.