The bill
Whole Health for Veterans Act
HR. 6848, 119th Congress — read as touching Hospitals & Health Systems.
Sponsored by
Rep. Deluzio, Christopher R. [D-PA-17]
ID: D000530
Follow the money
The bill
HR. 6848, 119th Congress — read as touching Hospitals & Health Systems.
The sponsor
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
22 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
This bill's text tracks the "Department of Veterans Affairs" section, p. 688-691 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Forwarded by Subcommittee to Full Committee by Voice Vote.
April 15, 2026
📍 Current Status
Next: The bill moves to the floor for full chamber debate and voting.
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of the intellectually bankrupt denizens of Congress. The "Whole Health for Veterans Act" - because what's more whole than a healthy dose of bureaucratic doublespeak and cynical pandering?
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The main purpose of this bill is to pretend to care about veterans' health while actually serving as a vehicle for special interests to line their pockets. The objective is to limit copayments for "Whole Health well-being services," which sounds like a euphemism for "New Age nonsense" or "overpriced yoga classes." It's a classic case of misdirection, where the real goal is to funnel more money into the coffers of complementary and integrative health providers.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill amends title 38 of the United States Code to prohibit the Secretary of Veterans Affairs from requiring copayments for Whole Health services, except in cases where a monthly copayment of up to $30 is authorized. Because, you know, $30 is a small price to pay for the privilege of being told to breathe deeply and visualize your chakras aligning. The bill also defines "Whole Health well-being services" with all the clarity of a mystic's crystal ball, ensuring that only the most creative and expensive providers will be able to cash in on this gravy train.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** Veterans, or at least those who are gullible enough to believe that Whole Health coaching and Tai Chi/Qigong classes are the key to their well-being. The real beneficiaries, however, are the lobbyists and special interest groups who have been pushing for greater recognition of complementary and integrative health services. It's a classic case of regulatory capture, where the foxes are guarding the henhouse and the hens are too busy practicing mindfulness to notice.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** The potential impact of this bill is to further erode the already-tenuous connection between veterans' healthcare and actual medical science. By promoting unproven and expensive treatments, Congress is essentially telling veterans that their health is not worth investing in evidence-based care. The implications are clear: more money will be wasted on pseudoscientific nonsense, while real healthcare needs go unaddressed. It's a diagnosis of legislative malpractice, with a prognosis of continued dysfunction and corruption.
In conclusion, the "Whole Health for Veterans Act" is a symptom of a deeper disease - a disease of cynicism, corruption, and utter disregard for the well-being of those who have served their country. It's a bill that should be met with the same skepticism and contempt that one would reserve for a snake oil salesman or a faith healer. But hey, at least it'll make for some great campaign rhetoric come election time.
Rep. Deluzio, Christopher R. [D-PA-17]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No PAC contributions found
No committee contributions found
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 57 nodes and 22 connections (60 secondary connections hidden)
Total contributions: $72,480
Showing top 18 donors by contribution amount
Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 2 helped.
Section 2(b) prohibits copayments for Whole Health well-being services for veterans in priority groups 1-5 and caps monthly copayments at $30 for others, increasing utilization of VA health services and benefiting hospitals and health systems that provide these services.
Section 2(c)(2) includes complementary and integrative health services such as guided imagery, meditation, Tai Chi/Qigong, and yoga for well-being, which may involve medical devices or equipment, potentially increasing demand for such devices in VA settings.
For each industry this bill affects, here's what the sponsor (Rep. Deluzio, Christopher R. [D-PA-17])received from donors associated with that industry during the 2022–present cycles. Donations are not proof of intent — they are a record of who funds the people writing the law.
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.AI-enhanced analysis provides detailed alignment ratings.
AI Analysis:
"The Whole Health for Veterans Act aligns strongly with Project 2025's focus on improving veteran healthcare access and experience by eliminating financial barriers to holistic, preventive services. Both emphasize expanding comprehensive, patient-centered care within the VA system to enhance long-term health outcomes."
— 655 — Department of Veterans Affairs ENDNOTES 1. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Division, VHA Directive 1003, “VHA Veteran Patient Experience,” April 14, 2020, pp. 1 and B-1. 2. S. 2372, VA Mission Act of 2018, Public Law No. 115-182, 115th Congress, June 6, 2018, https://www.congress. gov/115/plaws/publ182/PLAW-115publ182.pdf (accessed January 30, 2023). 3. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VA History Office, “VA History,” last updated May 27, 2021, https://www. va.gov/HISTORY/VA_History/Overview.asp (accessed January 28, 2023). 4. 38 U.S. Code § 1116, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/38/1116 (accessed January 28, 2023). 5. S. 3373, Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022 (Honoring Our PACT Act of 2022), Public Law No. 117-168, 117th Congress, August 10, 2022, https://www. congress.gov/117/plaws/publ168/PLAW-117publ168.pdf (accessed January 28, 2023). 6. H.R. 2471, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Public Law No. 117-103, 117th Congress, March 15, 2022, Division S, Title I, https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ103/PLAW-117publ103.pdf (accessed March 18, 2023). Known variously as the Department of Veterans Affairs Nurse and Physician Assistant Retention and Income Security Enhancement Act and the VA Nurse and Physician Assistant RAISE Act. 7. See note 5, supra.
AI Analysis:
"The bill supports preventive and holistic care for veterans, which aligns with Project 2025's emphasis on improving VA healthcare quality and patient experience through innovation and community input. However, it does not directly address the specific VA reform priorities in Project 2025 such as infrastructure review, caregiver program overhaul, or innovation office restructuring."
— 646 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 3. Section 121 (developing and administering an education program that teaches veterans about their health care options available from the Department of Veterans Affairs). 4. Section 152 (returning the Office for Innovation of Care and Payment to the Office of Enterprise Integration with a joint governance process set up with the VHA). 5. Section 161 (overhauling Family Caregiver Program expansion, which has gone poorly, so that it focuses on consistency of eligibility and awareness that the most severely wounded or injured may require the program indefinitely). l Require the VHA to report publicly on all aspects of its operation, including quality, safety, patient experience, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness, using standards similar to those in the Medicare Accountable Care Organization program so that the government may monitor and achieve continuous improvement in the VA system more effectively. l Encourage VA Medical Centers to seek out relevant academic and private- sector input in their communities to improve the overall patient experience. Budget l Conduct an independent audit of the VA similar to the 2018 Department of Defense (DOD) audit to identify IT, management, financial, contracting, and other deficiencies. l Assess the misalignment of VHA facilities and rising infrastructure costs. The VHA operates 172 inpatient medical facilities nationally that are an average of 60 years old. Some of these facilities are underutilized and inadequately staffed. Facilities in certain urban and rural areas are seeing significant declines in the veteran population and strong competition for fresh medical staff. In 2018, Congress authorized an Asset Infrastructure Review (AIR) of national VHA medical markets to provide insight into where the VA health care budget should be responsibly allocated to serve veterans most effectively. However, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee lacked the political will to act on the White House’s nominations of commission members, and this ultimately led to termination of the AIR process. The next Administration should seek out agile, creative, and politically acceptable operational solutions to this aging infrastructure status quo,
AI Analysis:
"The bill focuses on reducing copayments for Whole Health services to improve veteran access and affordability, while Project 2025 emphasizes healthcare system efficiency, workforce optimization, facility realignment, and EHR modernization. There is minimal thematic overlap, as the bill does not address CBOCs, personnel reforms, telehealth expansion, or wait time compliance outlined in the policy."
— 647 — Department of Veterans Affairs reimagine the health care footprint in some locales, and spur a realignment of capacity through budgetary allocations. Specifically: 1. Embrace the expansion of Community Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOCs) as an avenue to maintain a VA footprint in challenging medical markets without investing further in obsolete and unaffordable VA health care campuses. 2. Explore the potential to pilot facility-sharing partnerships between the VA and strained local health care systems to reduce costs by leveraging limited talent and resources. Personnel l Extend the term of the Under Secretary for Health (USH) to five years. Additionally, authority should be given to reappoint this individual for a second five-year term both to allow for continuity and to protect the USH from political transition. l Establish a Senior Executive Service (SES) position of VHA Care System Chief Information Officer (CIO), selected by and reporting to the chief of the VHA Care System with a dotted line to the VA CIO. l Identify a workflow process to bring wait times in compliance with VA MISSION Act–required time frames wherever possible. 1. Assess the daily clinical appointment load for physicians and clinical staff in medical facilities where wait times for care are well outside of the time frames required by the VA MISSION Act. 2. Require VHA facilities to increase the number of patients seen each day to equal the number seen by DOD medical facilities: approximately 19 patients per provider per day. Currently, VA facilities may be seeing as few as six patients per provider per day. 3. Consider a pilot program to extend weekday appointment hours and offer Saturday appointment options to veterans if a facility continues to demonstrate that it has excess capacity and is experiencing delays in the delivery of care for veterans. 4. Identify clinical services that are consistently in high demand but require cost-prohibitive compensation to recruit and retain talent, and examine exceptions for higher competitive pay. — 648 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 5. Assess the medical facilities where Community Care is readily available but referrals for Community Care are below the averages in other similar markets, referrals expiring are above the average, and/ or canceled appointments are above the average. Identify reasons and factors and consider possible ways to improve timeliness and responsiveness for veterans. 6. Further explore how to leverage telehealth to reduce personnel costs across the enterprise and serve veterans. Continue to pursue expansion of broadband services to remote and rural areas. 7. Assess recruitment and retention in highly competitive medical markets to identify common limiting factors for attracting high-demand, specialized occupations. 8. Consider aggressively recruiting retired physicians who desire to serve veterans. 9. Consider expanding VA tuition assistance in exchange for reciprocal service in rural or understaffed VAMCs. 10. Examine the surpluses or deficits in mental health professionals throughout the enterprise, recognizing that the department needs a blend of social workers, therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists with a focus on attracting high-quality talent. l Conduct a high-priority assessment of Electronic Health Record (EHR) transition delays and functionality problems. VA innovation in health care for the next 20 years and beyond will rest squarely on the timely implementation of the new VHA EHR in coordination with the DOD’s parallel pacing effort. The VA’s EHR rollout has been blocked by technical delays at local facilities where personnel have raised safety concerns and infrastructure has not been modernized to accept the new system. VETERANS BENEFITS ADMINISTRATION (VBA) Needed Reforms The most evident and ongoing concern is the complexity of benefits, which can lead to confusion for the veteran and, if not mitigated early in the veteran’s interactions, long-term distrust of and animosity toward the VA. Wholesale ben- efits reform is unnecessary and politically a “third rail,” but effective managerial
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
Policy matches are calculated using a hybrid approach: initial candidates are found using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text, then an AI model (Llama 3.1 70B) provides detailed alignment ratings and analysis. Ratings range from 1 (minimal alignment) to 5 (very strong alignment). This analysis does not imply direct causation or intent.