The President’s 2017 Budget provides $78.7 billion in total discretionary budget authority for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Joshua D. Mosshart

Vetrans Affairs Mission Statement:

To fulfill President Lincoln's promise “To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan” by serving and honoring the men and women who are America’s Veterans.

Vetrans Affairs Core Values:

Integrity: Act with high moral principle. Adhere to the highest professional standards. Maintain the trust and confidence of all with whom I engage.

Commitment: Work diligently to serve Veterans and other beneficiaries. Be driven by an earnest belief in VA’s mission. Fulfill my individual responsibilities and organizational responsibilities.

Advocacy: Be truly Veteran-centric by identifying, fully considering, and appropriately advancing the interests of Veterans and other beneficiaries.

Respect: Treat all those I serve and with whom I work with dignity and respect. Show respect to earn it.

Excellence: Strive for the highest quality and continuous improvement. Be thoughtful and decisive in leadership, accountable for my actions, willing to admit mistakes, and rigorous in correcting them.

2017 Budget

The budget provides needed care and other benefits to eligible veterans, their families, and survivors. 

This includes:

• With the 2017 advance appropriations, a total of $65.0 billion for VA medical care to provide high-quality, timely health care services to veterans and other eligible beneficiaries. In addition, the Budget requests $66.4 billion in 2018 advance appropriations. 
• Supporting improvements in veterans’ mental health care, telehealth care, life-saving treatment for Hepatitis C, specialized care for women veterans, long-term care, and benefits for veterans’ caregivers. 
• Investing $1.6 billion in programs that will continue VA’s gains toward ending veteran homelessness. 
• Providing $7.2 billion in discretionary funding for veterans’ Care in the Community, which, combined with resources from the 2014 Veterans Choice Act, will support over 15.6 million medical procedures for veterans by non-VA providers. 
• Strengthening veterans’ benefits programs by improving the timeliness of non-disability claims and further enhancing disability claims processing accuracy and efficiency. 
• Increasing burial access for veterans and eligible family members with the construction of new national cemeteries in Colorado and western New York, and national cemetery expansions in Jacksonville, Florida and South Florida. 

Reforms: 

• Continues the largest Department-wide transformation in VA’s history through the MyVA initiative, which is changing VA’s culture, processes, and capabilities to put the needs, expectations, and interests of veterans and their families first. 
• Proposes a Simplified Appeals initiative to provide veterans with the timely, fair, and streamlined appeals decisions they deserve. 
• Supports legislation to streamline the Care in the Community programs. 

There is a big opportunity for grants, cooperative agreements and contracts with the VA. 

When businesses align their value proposition with the VA's initiatives awards and contracts have a very high probability.

Source: Vetrans Affairs

Joshua D. Mosshart MSFS, CHFC, CASL, CLU

The President’s FY 2017 Budget provides $82.8 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Health and Human Services. Joshua D. Mosshart

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Mission is charged with enhancing the health and well-being of Americans by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services. 

To support this mission, the Budget provides $82.8 billion in discretionary funding for HHS as well as new mandatory investments to expand mental health services, opioid abuse treatment availability, and research and development. 

Keeping People Safe and Healthy: 

This Budget makes robust investments in the safety and health of all Americans, particularly those at key stages of life by - 

•  Increasing access to early intervention mental and behavioral health programs, expanding the behavioral health workforce and supporting suicide prevention. 
•  Addressing opioid abuse, misuse, and overdose through a $1 billion initiative to expand access to treatment. 
•  Continuing to expand the nation’s ability to fight antibiotic resistance through targeted interventions and research. 
•  Supporting emergency preparedness and response, by bringing the U.S. and world partners together around natural and man-made threats, disasters, outbreaks and epidemics. 
•  Maintaining historic investments in Head Start and increasing the number of children attending programs of longer duration. 
•  Making landmark investments in child care by increasing the number of children served, investing in the quality of the child care workforce, and implementing new health and safety requirements. 

Leading in Scientific Research and Medical Innovation: Scientific, technological, and medical breakthroughs are crucial for American success in the 21st century, and this Budget makes investments to maintain America’s position at the forefront of these efforts by - 

1.  Supporting the Vice President’s Cancer Moonshot to improve understanding of the causes of cancer, develop new prevention strategies, improve early detection, diagnosis, and treatment and modernize regulatory pathways. 
2.  Continuing to scale up the Precision Medicine Initiative and a dedicated research cohort of a million or more individuals. 
3.  Supporting research such as the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality efforts to build an evidence base to drive systemic health care improvement.
4. Expanding and Strengthening our Health Care System:

Building on the success of the Affordable Care Act and other initiatives, this Budget maintains efforts to expand access to coverage, increase capacity, and build a better, smarter, healthier health care delivery system by - 

1.  Supporting the operation of Health Insurance Marketplaces to make quality coverage affordable, and encouraging states to expand their Medicaid programs 
2.  Building a better, smarter, healthier health care system by incentivizing quality, rather than quantity of services, and promoting information sharing. 
3.  Building on HHS’s ongoing work to reduce the rising cost of prescription drugs, without discouraging important and lifesaving innovations. 

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Initiatives:

1. Expands Mental Health Treatment.
2. Addresses Opioid Abuse, Misuse, and Overdose.
3. Combats Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria.
4. Provides Medical Product Safety and Availability.
5. Supports Emergency Preparedness .
6. Promotes Food Safety.
7. Makes Landmark Investments in Child Care.
8.  Groundwork for Universal Preschool.
9. Improving Outcomes for Children in the Child Welfare System.
10. Enhances Child Welfare Workforce Development.
11. Promotes Family-Based Care for Children in Foster Care.
12. Strengthens Efforts to Help Poor Families Succeed.
13. Supports Older Adults.
14. Addresses Alzheimer’s Disease.
15. Invests in Health Centers.
16. Protects Against Cyber Threats.
17. Invests in Necessary Infrastructure and Mission Critical Facilities.
18. Advances the Precision Medicine Initiative.

Leading in Scientific Research and Medical Innovation 

Grant opportunities are significant for the entrepreneur that has technologies that support these initiatives 

Source: HSS

Joshua D. Mosshart MSFS, CHFC, CASL, CLU