VA lets disabled veterans get medical care outside the U.S.
H.R. 439 — Veterans Foreign Medical Coverage Equality and Modernization Act of 2025 · Filed by Nicolas LaLota (R-NY) · 22 cosponsors · Introduced Jan 15, 2025 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
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What it does
The bill lets veterans with permanent and total service-connected disabilities get hospital care outside the United States. The care must meet U.S. medical standards. The VA must make it easier to pay veterans back for this care. The VA must use direct deposit and digital tracking. The VA must report to Congress in two years.
Who it affects
Veterans with permanent and total service-connected disabilities can now get medical care in other countries. The VA must set up new systems to pay for this care.
One thing to notice
The bill does not say how much money the VA will spend. The bill does not say how the VA will check that foreign doctors meet its standards.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
22 cosponsors: 16 Democrats, 6 Republicans.
- Jan 15, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Jan 15, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Veterans' Affairs · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
3 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 5 reports from Dec 2025 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $529,800 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 109 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 61% of bills with any report.
Nicolas LaLota, who sponsored the bill, received $1,009,333 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- Disabled American Veterans — $310,451 in 2 reports
- Paralyzed Veterans of America — $199,349 in 2 reports
- American Citizens Abroad, Inc. — $20,000 in 1 report
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- permanent and total service-connected disabilities — Injuries or illnesses from military service that are permanent and stop a person from working.
- direct deposit — Money sent straight to a bank account instead of by check.
- digital tracking — Using computers to follow and record where something is or what happened to it.
- lobbying — Trying to influence lawmakers about a bill. Companies and groups pay people to do this.
- PACs — Groups that collect money and give it to candidates for office.
- sponsored — To sponsor a bill is to introduce it in Congress and put your name on it.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (2,410 characters) on May 21, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,778 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 21, 2026 · page rendered 2026-11-02.
“VA lets disabled veterans get medical care outside the U.S.” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/hr439/simple Report an error
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