Some relatives of Arkansas veterans have had trouble obtaining the financial compensation they were promised after losing their family member to covid-19, and U.S. Sen. John Boozman said Friday that Congress needs to change that.
For the second year in a row, Boozman is co-sponsoring a bipartisan bill in the U.S. Senate that would make it easier for a veteran's family to claim benefits if the veteran had a preexisting "service-connected disability," or an illness or disability resulting from military service, before contracting and dying of covid-19.
The Ensuring Survivor Benefits During COVID-19 Act was first introduced in 2020 and reintroduced in January after the new Congress was sworn in. The legislation is a response to one of many "new things that simply haven't happened before covid," Boozman said.
"The death certificate says the cause of death was covid, but that's not really true," he said. "If the death certificate reads that way, it's much harder for the surviving spouse to prove the underlying conditions were service-related."
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