Casey pushes 'GI Bill' for health care workers
Likening the coronavirus pandemic to a war and quoting from President Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., announced Tuesday his plans to introduce a “GI Bill” for health care workers during the pandemic.
That legislation — which would be titled the Pandemic Responder Service Award Act — would make a large swath of health care or health care-adjacent workers eligible for an annual award that can go to education, business or other necessary costs, for up to four years.
Casey said health care workers, from doctors and nurses to food service and janitorial workers in hospitals, deserve an “enduring measure of gratitude,” more permanent than shows of thanks and grateful signs.
“It should be tangible,” Casey said in a conference call with reporters. “It should be something they should literally take with them.”
Continuing his comparisons to war, Casey quoted Lincoln's second inaugural address, saying health care workers should be cared for much like they cared for patients.
“We need to make sure that we are trying our best by legislation by a monetary amount to care for him or her who shall have borne this battle, and this battle happens to be this war against the virus,” he said.
[naviga:h3]Proposed benefits[/naviga:h3]
Workers eligible under the proposed legislation would receive four years of monetary aid equivalent to the average in-state tuition cost of public higher education. They could use that money for paying off student loan debt, obtaining higher education or applying it toward retirement savings, buying a house or starting a business.
In obtaining education, these workers could use the funds for associate, bachelor or graduate degrees, as well as vocational and technical training or apprenticeships, licensing and certification.
“We have to, I think, have a response which is commensurate or begins to approximate the sacrifice made by these frontline workers — in this case, health care workers,” Casey said. “We do have to be appropriately responsive to their needs, especially those who are serving on the front lines and then coming off the battlefield.”
Tammy May, president of the Butler Local of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which has 400 staff nurses at Butler Memorial Hospital, said while Casey's legislation seems supportive, it seems to her there is new proposed legislation to help such workers introduced every other day.
“As far as an official standing, I'd have to talk to my representative,” said May, a registered nurse in the intensive care unit for 27 years. “I'm just not as versed in this as other people would be.”
[naviga:h3]A 'GI Bill'[/naviga:h3]
Casey said the sacrifices of health care professionals is immense, and they're putting themselves and their families at risk by treating patients during the pandemic.
He added that the context for a relief bill has different, but similar, circumstances.
“It's a different war,” he said. “It's not a shooting war, where weapons are being discharged and people were being killed were wounded, it's a war against this virus.”
Health care workers during the pandemic often have been referred to as “front-line” workers, and Casey echoed those sentiments.
“I think most would agree that these workers, if there is a front of the front line, these are the workers that are there,” he said.
The senator said such a proposed relief package not only would thank those workers but also provide them with opportunities they missed out on, which he said was the original intent of the GI Bill.
“We're trying to mimic or replicate or be inspired by the GI Bill after World War II, where so many millions of Americans were serving their country overseas in combat, …, they were at an age where they were missing an opportunity for further education of one kind or another, so the nation came together and enacted the GI Bill,” he said. “The benefits of that bill are hard to calculate, all these decades later. That bill helped build the middle class in addition to saying 'thank you.'”
Casey estimated the number of eligible workers would be in the “tens of millions,” and said he couldn't estimate a dollar cost for his proposed bill.
“It will be very expensive, but when you're fighting a war and you're responding to the impact of that war, we can't be penny pinchers,” he said.
Eagle community editor Eric Freehling contributed to this report.
