Sponsors (7)
The bill would improve targeted veterans' health programs and congressional oversight by producing annual individual-level cause-of-death data, at the cost of added VA administrative burden and increased privacy risks for veterans unless strong protections are enforced.
Veterans: VA and public-health partners will receive annual, standardized individual-level cause-of-death data that helps identify leading causes (including suicide) and target prevention and treatment programs.
Taxpayers and policymakers: Congress and oversight bodies will get consistent mortality data to better evaluate VA programs and allocate resources based on evidence.
Veterans: Releasing detailed, individual-level cause-of-death records risks privacy breaches or re-identification of sensitive information if de-identification and safeguards are insufficient.
VA operations and federal employees: Compiling, validating, and annually producing individual-level mortality data will increase administrative workload and program costs for the VA.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires VA to send an annual report listing each veteran's primary/secondary causes of death, total service-connected disability status, whether suicide was secondary to that disability, and counts by cause.
Introduced May 29, 2025 by Chuck Edwards · Last progress May 29, 2025
Requires the Department of Veterans Affairs to file an annual report to the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees listing, for each veteran who died in the reporting period, whether they had a total service-connected disability, their primary and (if any) secondary causes of death, and whether the death was a suicide secondary to a total service-connected disability. The report must also give counts of deaths by each primary cause and the law adds a table entry for the new reporting section. The change is strictly a data and reporting requirement for VA to provide more detailed death-cause information to congressional veterans' committees; it does not create new benefits or appropriate funds in the text provided.