For these veterans, ‘free’ health care is 5-hour flight away

MAJURO, Marshall Islands — Ovenny Jermeto was on a combat tour 7,000 miles away from his island home in the Pacific when a bomb blew up his vehicle in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan. He survived and completed his deployment, but later lost feeling in his right foot and struggled with anxiety and depression.

He returned to the United States to finish his enlistment, eventually getting discharged on medical grounds. Then, he had to make a difficult decision: remain in the United States for free health care or return home to the Marshall Islands and spend thousands of dollars a year traveling to military hospitals in America for treatment.

This is a predicament for hundreds of people from the Marshall Islands, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia — all former American colonies in Pacific Micronesia — who served in the U.S. military as foreign citizens.

The Veterans Affairs Department, which oversees veterans’ benefits, is largely hamstrung. Federal law prohibits it from directly providing medical services to veterans in foreign countries other than the Philippines, a department spokesperson said.

Jermeto, 44, chose to move back to Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, in 2019, almost a decade after the episode in Afghanistan. Since then, he has scrounged for three trips to the closest U.S. military hospital, a five-hour flight away in Hawaii, and spent years without medication.

VA spokesman John Santos said that although the department could not directly provide care outside America, it reimburses veterans if they get it. All veterans are eligible for subsidized care, and those with conditions related to their service get it for free. But health systems in Micronesia are so short of resources that getting care locally is practically impossible.

Traveling to VA hospitals is also not easy. Federal law permits the VA to compensate veterans for health-related travel, but regulations restrict that to movement within the United States and its territories.

There has been a bipartisan push in Congress to address the issue.

“This is a question of basic fairness,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii. “If someone puts on the uniform to serve our nation, they should be given the same benefits that our service members receive, no matter where they live.”

In 2019, Schatz proposed legislation that would require the VA to experiment with providing services to veterans in Micronesia through telehealth and by opening small clinics there. The bill remains stalled.