WASHINGTON — A program that pays for veterans in rural areas to get health care closer to home would become permanent under a new bill.
U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin's bill, Helping our Rural Veterans Receive Health Care Act, would extend a program that pays for veterans who live more than about an hour's drive from a VA hospital to get their care at private hospitals locally.
Cary Medical Center in Caribou was one of the five hospitals in the pilot program which began in 2011; Poliquin, a Republican from Maine's 2nd District, says for veterans in northern Maine, it has been a huge success.
"There have been already 10,000 vets in Aroostook County who've chosen to go," he says, "and the same results have been seen in the other four pilot programs around the country."
Those include hospitals in Virginia, Kansas, Arizona and Montana.
The bill would also expand the program so hospitals around the country could apply to be part of it.
