A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION, Encouraging the Executive Board of the Legislature to authorize the interim legislative study of long-term care services for veterans regardless of disability ratings and to develop long-term care plans for VA-operated purchased and subsidized long-term care services.

WHEREAS, South Dakota has a population of sixty-three thousand, nine hundred and fifty resident veterans, of whom twenty thousand and seventy-one veterans are older than the age of seventy; and

WHEREAS, the current and only state veterans nursing home, the Michael J. Fitzmaurice South Dakota State Veterans Home, is located in the extreme southwestern part of the state, in Hot Springs, South Dakota; and

WHEREAS, long-stay services are available for enrolled veterans who need nursing home care for life or for an extended period of time for those veterans with a service-connected disability rated sixty percent and who are unable to be employed, or veterans who have a seventy percent or greater service-connected disability; and

WHEREAS, the community nursing home program has contracts established with VA medical centers to help meet the needs of veterans who require long-term nursing home care in their own community, close to family, and meet the enrollment and eligibility requirements; and

WHEREAS, as our nation's veteran population ages, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and rural states will face an increasing demand for long-term care services:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Ninety-Eighth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, to recommend to the Executive Board of the Legislative Research Council the establishment of a legislative study to address the needs of South Dakota veterans and the challenges that they face in accessing long-term nursing home care; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that this legislative study is recommended to be under the supervision of the Executive Board of the Legislative Research Council and staffed and funded as an interim legislative committee, and that this committee report to the Legislature and the Governor before the beginning of the Ninety-Ninth Legislative Session, including any further draft legislation or policy recommendations.