Sponsors (7)
The bill gives the VA and Congress better, annual mortality data to improve veteran health programs and oversight, but it raises privacy risks for veterans and imposes additional administrative costs on the VA.
Veterans: Annual, detailed cause-of-death data lets the VA identify leading mortality causes (including suicide) so it can target health care, prevention, and outreach more effectively.
Taxpayers and policymakers: Consistent, standardized mortality data gives Congress and overseers better evidence to evaluate VA policies and allocate resources more effectively.
Veterans: Detailed death-level records increase risks to privacy and potential re-identification of sensitive information about veterans and their families if not properly de-identified and protected.
VA operations: Preparing, validating, and releasing individual-level cause-of-death data annually will raise administrative workload and costs for the VA, which could divert resources from services.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires VA to submit annual reports to congressional veterans committees listing each veteran death with total service‑connected disability status, causes of death, and suicide linkage, plus aggregate counts by primary cause.
Official title: To amend title 38, United States Code, to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to submit an annual report that contains data and information on the causes of deaths among veterans, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 29, 2025 by Chuck Edwards · Last progress May 29, 2025
Requires the Department of Veterans Affairs to produce an annual, detailed report to congressional veterans committees listing causes of death for each veteran who died during the covered period and summarizing totals by cause. For each decedent the report must note whether the veteran had a total service-connected disability, list primary and secondary causes of death (if any), and indicate whether the death was a suicide secondary to a total service-connected disability.