Sponsors (9)
Introduced May 29, 2025 by John J. McGuire · Last progress May 29, 2025
The bill increases transparency and research access to VA care and costs—potentially improving veteran services and fiscal oversight—while imposing privacy risks, implementation costs, and operational burdens, with those benefits limited to a five‑year window unless extended.
Veterans — annual, detailed public reporting on VA health care use, outcomes, and costs for five years increases transparency and supports better-targeted policies and services for populations with complex needs (TBI, mental health, polytrauma, spinal cord injury, homelessness, long‑term care).
Researchers and policymakers — a new data‑sharing system gives eligible researchers access to aggregated/anonymized individual‑level VA data to enable analysis of care, outcomes, and benefits and improve evidence-based policymaking.
Taxpayers — mandated reporting of costs, copayments, Medical Care Collections Fund receipts, and average Department cost per service improves fiscal transparency and oversight of VA spending.
Veterans — sharing granular anonymized records (diagnostic codes, dates, facility visits) creates a risk of reidentification and potential privacy breaches despite safeguards.
Federal and state VA staff — compiling, validating, and publishing extensive disaggregated data annually for five years will create substantial administrative burden and require staff time and new processes.
Taxpayers — building and operating the data‑sharing system and meeting new reporting requirements may require additional VA resources or budget reallocation, creating potential fiscal costs.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires VA to deliver annual five‑year reports with detailed patient, clinical, enrollment, access, and cost data on VA health care and nursing home services.
Requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to deliver an annual, detailed report to the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees for five years beginning on enactment. Each report must describe VA hospital, medical, and nursing home care delivered in the prior calendar year and include many specified data elements on patient counts, demographics, diagnoses, enrollment, access metrics, long‑term care details, service‑connected disabilities, mental health and polytrauma, homeless veterans, and State home funding levels. The reports must include totals and rates for major chronic conditions, demographic breakdowns (age, sex, period of service), condition summaries for Post‑9/11 veterans, breakdowns for mental health and traumatic brain injury, enrollment and priority‑group data, time from separation to enrollment/first visit, and averages for costs and copayments. The requirement runs for five years and does not authorize new spending or create new programs in the text provided.