Governments (federal, state, and local) have historically been long on gestures and short on action.
It wasn't until I was probably in my late teens/early 20s that I found out why Dad didn't care for game wardens one bit. I remember a time when he and I were fishing and a game warden came puttering along the bank towards us. Asked me if I had my fishing license and I pulled mine out and showed him. He puttered over to where Dad was and asked him if he had his fishing license. Dad just sat there on his tackle box, watching his pole, and said "Yep". The game warden stood in his boat for several minutes and finally moved on.
"Why didn't you show him your fishing license, Dad?" "He didn't ask to see it. He asked if I HAD it."
Turns out that way back "in the day", Indiana gave all the returning WWII veterans lifetime fishing licenses in honor of their service. Mom and Dad, both having served, qualified. Not too many years later, Indiana reneged on that and then all the WWII veterans had to buy their fishing licenses every year again.
The government has a history of not treating those who gave a significant portion of their lives over to a life of literally placing themselves in harms way in order to kill or be killed at the government's behest (or being used as involuntary test subjects either secretly, against their will, or under deliberately misleading premises) and then getting shafted afterwards in numerous ways.
I said earlier that as of last year, there were 167,284 WWII veterans out of 16 million still alive. Had something like this been done decades ago, when getting health care would actually make a difference in their longevity and quality of life in their prime and senior years, then perhaps there would have been ten times that number alive today, having passed their wit and wisdom along that much more in the process.
Right now, the average person who has reached 95 is looking at about 3 more years to live, statistically. This means that in about three more years, we'll be lucky to have more than a handful of those 167,284 people left whom we've deemed to be "The Greatest Generation".
This is the very epitome of "token gesture".
Collins Dictionary: You use token to describe things or actions which are small or unimportant, but are meant to show particular intentions or feelings which may not be sincere.