Dr. David Chu is chewing on veterans budgets again.
BUDGET SHORTFALLS BLAMED ON RETIREES: The 25 JAN 05 Wall Street Journal issue carried a front-page story "As Benefits for Veterans Climb, Military Spending Feels Freeze." The story talks about the arguments made by Pentagon officials that military retirees are taking budget money that military leaders want to use to help troops fighting today. It noted the assertions of Dr. David Chu who is the Pentagon's Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness during their interview. He stated that the amounts have gotten to the point where they are hurtful. They are taking away from the nation's ability to defend itself and improving retiree and survivor benefits does not affect active duty retention.
The story asserts that Congress, feeling the pressure by veterans groups has boosted retiree and survivor benefits including TRICARE For Life, concurrent receipt, and SBP. It is difficult to believe that the words of Dr. Hue are the official position of the Pentagon or just a case of foot in mouth disease. However, after six days the Pentagon’s public relations office has not made any news releases that commented on or disputed Dr. Chu’s assertions which have enraged veteran groups throughout the country.
Issues about military benefits should be publicly aired, but assertions that increased spending on benefits for military retirees and widows is taking money from weapons or other active duty funding needs or off base. Congress over the past two years has passed legislation specifying that no money for TRICARE For Life or concurrent receipt is to come out of the DoD budget, but is to come from elsewhere in the Treasury. Regarding retention the Joint Chiefs of Staff fought to repeal retirement cuts in the late 1990s after those cuts were found to be contributing to serious retention and readiness problems. The Joint Chiefs also told Congress at the time that they supported retiree health care fixes, because active duty troops know that they'll be retired someday, too. The troops are smart and can see through a "give them bonuses now and cut their future benefits" philosophy; that's exactly what gave rise to the retention and readiness crises of the late 1970s and late 1990s, after years of erosion of benefits. Congress has demonstrated time and again that it will provide funding to meet the needs of both our active duty forces and our military retirees and survivors. If any Administration chooses to impose internal funding limitations or budget trade-offs that is in direct conflict with the intent of statutes passed by Congress and signed into law that were written specifically to prevent that from happening. The WSJ article points out why the Military Coalition of fraternal organizations have a responsibility to help ensure that retention lessons learned under previous administrations aren't lost as leadership changes, independent of any particular Administration's budget-driven proposals. VADM Ryan's (President of the MOAA) recently wrote an article on this issue in their magazine titled “Freedom Isn’t Free” which addresses precisely that point. It can be read at www.moaa.org/Magazine/CurrentEdition/presidents_page.asp. The Wall Street Journal article can be viewed at http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1156160669825.html . [Source: Various JAN 05]

VA COMPENSATION LEVELS INCONSISTENT: Bush’s new Secretary (Jim Nicholson) to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, pledged he would work to ensure that veterans across the country are given the same treatment, regardless of where they live. During the Senate hearings he said it was a "real issue" that veterans in different states are awarded different levels of compensation.
The reasons for those differences, however, are still something of a mystery. Responding to questions Nicholson said he was still examining the issue and was waiting for the inspector general's assessment on the topic. He made the comments in testimony to the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee. Nicholson previously was chairman of the Republican National Committee and most recently served as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.
The issue of state-by-state variation stems from figures compiled by the VA that show veterans in some states getting far higher annual payments than veterans in other states. For example, according to the VA's most recent annual the average payment for disability compensation is $7,861 yet veterans in New Mexico receive an average of $10,851 and veterans in Ohio only receive an average $6,710.
The regional differences have erupted as a significant issue in Illinois, which ranks near the bottom of the average payment lists. There is an annual difference of $5,000 between average disability compensation to veterans in Illinois versus payments to veterans in Puerto Rico, which has the highest average payments. Chicago media, led by the Chicago Sun-Times, have reported extensively on the issue, and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has flagged it as a major concern.
The department's inspector general also has launched an examination of the issue. Knight Ridder Newspapers, in a report last summer, also highlighted such disparities, particularly the percentage of veterans in each state who are part of the disability compensation system. Across the country, their analysis of VA data found, an estimated 572,000 U.S. veterans may not be receiving the compensation to which they're entitled from the federal government for disabilities suffered in the service of their country.
There was also wide variation by state in the percentage of veterans who participate in the program. At the high end are states such as Alaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, where 12% to 16% of veterans receive disability compensation payments. At the low end are Illinois, Iowa, Connecticut and Michigan, where 6% or 7% of veterans get compensation. The national average is 9.9%.
Many state governments have taken it upon themselves to find these uncompensated veterans. After Knight Ridder's story, legislation was introduced in July by Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., to require the VA to educate all veterans about the benefits due them. In the last Congress, no action was taken on Coleman's bill. But his spokesman say that the measure will be reintroduced. Disability payments, which now go to about 2.5 million veterans, are designed to compensate veterans who suffer physical or mental injuries while serving in the armed services.
Veterans’ experts say that demographic issues, over which the VA has little control, may explain some of the variation. Another possible explanation is that VA workers may be trained differently and therefore determine a veteran's level of disability differently. Nicholson stated that if he was confirmed it would be a "high priority" to better understand the regional disparities. Congress did confirm him in a 14-0 vote. He replaced Anthony Principi, who has served as leader of the agency since early in Bush's first term. [Source: Knight Ridder Newspaper article 24 JAN 05]

Dave this is a good read so how bad is it gonna be on retiree's?

Here is one more for your review. If you like my posting information, not usually found in the local newspapers, let me know and I will keep on posting items of interest with the VA and veterans budgets.
Here is another on current LEGISLATION OF INTEREST UPDATE 04:
With the start of the 109th Congress a number of bills have already been introduced in the House and Senate. Here is a summary of those bills of interest to veterans:

S. 11 (Sen. Levin, D-MI) is an omnibus bill that would increase Army and Marine Corps strengths, provide tax credits to employers of mobilized Guard/Reserve members, increase the military death gratuity to $100,000, eliminate the DIC offset to SBP, accelerate the 2008 effective date of SBP, and provide additional health coverage options to all Selected Reserve members, among other provisions.

S. 13 A bill to overhaul veterans’ health care benefits.

S. 42 (Sen. Allen, R-VA) and S. 44 (Sen. Hagel, R-NE) would both raise the death gratuity to $100,000 for members killed on active duty since 9/11.

S. 43 (Sen. Hagel, R-NE) would end the $1200 enrollment fee for the Montgomery GI Bill (MGIB), refund the fee to MGIB-participating members on active duty, and offer an new enrollment opportunity to all non-participating active duty members.

S. 77 (Sen. Sessions, R-AL) would increase maximum military life insurance coverage from $250,000 to $400,000 of which the first $150,000 would be premium-free for members serving in combat zones and raise the military death gratuity to $100,000 for servicemembers killed in combat.

S. 121 (Sen. DeWine, R-OH) would increase the death gratuity to $100,000 for the surviving spouse plus $25,000 for each surviving child, authorize free TRICARE Prime eligibility for surviving children until the age of 18 or 22 (if enrolled in school), double the education benefit for surviving children, and increase DIC to $1500 per month for an eligible surviving spouse plus $750 per month for each surviving child.

S. 185, the Military Retiree Survivor Equity Act, would end the deduction of VA survivor benefits (paid when the member’s death is caused by a service-connected condition) from the survivor’s SBP annuity. It also would move up the 2008 effective date of 30-year paid-up SBP coverage to a 2005 implementation.

H.R. 97 (Rep. Sam Graves, R-MO) would limit interest rates to 36 percent for consumer credit extended to a service member or a service member’s dependent. If passed, the measure would authorize a fine or up to one year imprisonment (or both) for lenders who violate the interest cap. The legislation was introduced in response to reports that some lending agencies target military personnel with promises of quick and easy loans and are able to charge interest rates as high as 390 percent. By contrast service members are able to obtain loans from credit unions with 18 percent interest.

H.R. 292 (Rep. Spencer Bauchus (Ala.) would also increase the benefit paid to survivors to $100,000. The measure is being considered by the House Armed Services Committee and currently has 157 cosponsors

H.R. 303 (Rep. Bilirakis, R-FL) would eliminate the disability offset to military retired pay effective 1 JAN 06 for all members with a service-connected disability who had sufficient service to retired independent of any disability.

H.R. 333 (Rep. Lynch, D-MA) would protect education status and financial interests of servicemembers called to active duty while enrolled in college courses.

H.R. 377 (Rep. Everett, R-AL) is the House companion bill to Sen. Sessions’ S. 77.

You can track cosponsorship, current status, and other information on selected bills of interest at: http://capwiz.com/moaa/issues/bills/. You can also send your legislators suggested messages urging their support via this site by simply entering your ZIP code in the appropriate block.

BTW I was Ohio State Legislative Chairman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. from 1996 to 98, when I left to be employed by AMVETS.

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Originally posted by coachman:
Dave this is a good read so how bad is it gonna be on retiree's?

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Hopefully we can stop it in its tracks. The only way to do it is to complain loudly to U.S. Senators and Representatives. Those of whom you vote in their district.
The veteran organizations are already on this; but they need our support as well!

According to administration officials, President Bush’s FY2006 budget proposal plans to increase health charges to veterans. The president’s $2.5 trillion budget includes a proposal to more than double co-payment charges for veterans receiving prescription drugs, while requiring some veterans to pay a new annual fee of $250 to use government health care.

The proposal stands to face opposition from veterans organizations along with members of Congress. According to a NY Times article, "Democrats have already indicated that they are poised to pounce on any sign that the Bush administration is stinting on veterans’ benefits."

The budget plan would increase co-payments from $7 to $15 for a month's supply of prescription drugs. Moreover, the $250 fee for government health care would largely apply to those veterans without service-related disabilities and higher incomes. As of now, the government does not have an estimate of how many veterans would be affected by the proposal.

However, I do!

The budget proposal by the Administration is not a fait acompliby any means. Most programs are funded by 'supplementals' and administration plans are usually a political tool.

If there isn't enough pork in a particular proposal, they are covered in supplementals. Administration budgets, however, are the lightning rods which stir the most interest because they tell you where the Administration is on policy issues.

It would be a sad thing to think that this particular Administration would cut Veteran's benefits or to not sponsor aggressive legislation to insure that Vets get all the funding to which they are due.

This is not a political issue. There are going to be some mighty fine veterans suffer as a result of the increase. Neither the Dem's nor the Pub's are supporting any type of full veterans healthcare.
The major problem is over doubling prescription co-pay for a 30 day supply of meds. That will be for service connected veterans receiving medication for a non service connected condition, as well as non service connected veterans. These are the veteran’s few people have any compassion for. It seems in the eyes of the masses, if you are not service connected disabled you need to make it on your own. Most do agree to help those below the poverty line. But what about those slightly above the line who are treated for a non service connected condition, but are service connected?
For example a veteran is currently 50% disabled for PTSD. As a result, who will hire someone that disabled with a nervous disorder? So his only income is $663 per month VA and $900 SS per month, a total of $1,563. He has 10 prescriptions which are for non service connected conditions: 10X $15 = pain! Before he pays his rent, utilities and buys a loaf of bread his income is reduced by the co-pay of $150, not much to those on various internet sites. But for a guy barely making it, well…...
Now this veteran uses fuel oil and drives 60 miles one way to the VA for his appointments. There may be no inflation in the rest of the country but gasoline cost is rising in southern Ohio.

The House and Senate veterans' affairs committees have voted to impose an enrollment fee of at least $230 to $500 a year on 2.4 million veterans, one out of three now eligible for Veterans Affairs Health care. The veterans in priority categories 7 and 8, means by definition are not in the poverty levels and do not have a service-connected disability. One and one half million used the system in 2004. Another one and one half million were denied use last year. The fees will be used in reducing the amounts from tax dollars as an offset.
Both House and Senate committee chairmen stated in separate statements by official letter, that do to a tight VA budget and the number of new veterans returning from war with severe injuries measures must be taken. The chairmen defended enrollment fees against the stiff criticism expected from veterans' service organizations.
I will say, due to our continued bombardment of the politicians with the e-mails, letters and phone calls, we may have avoided the more than double prescription co-pay! That was an increase of $8 per prescription for a 30 supply.

Info from the Committee Hearings:
The request by Secretary Jim Nicholson was to charge a $250 enrollment fee, to the 2.4 million Priority 7 and 8 enrollees. Then co-payments on VA-filled prescriptions rise to $15, from $7, for a 30-day supply. The Secretary of the VA estimated that 213,000 would disenroll rather than pay the higher fees. Jim Nicholson, the new secretary of Veterans Affairs, described the enrollment fee as “similar to the fee legally required of military retirees enrolled in the Tricare system.” Given that military retirees must have served at least 20 years, and VA enrollees “as few as two years,” Nicholson suggested the VA fee is “more justified.”

To the criticism that $250 a year is unaffordable for many veterans, Secretary Nicholson said no Priority 7 and 8 veterans are destitute, and Priority 8 veterans have incomes above a geographic means test that, for those with no dependents, ranges from $25,000 in low-cost areas up to $71,000 in pricey areas, such as San Francisco.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, new Senate committee chairman, said, “such proposals have been declared dead on arrival perhaps even before … analyzed. I do not intend to take that approach.” But Senator Craig did state, the new VA budget is “considerably less friendly then it was during the flush years of the past four.”

These cost-saving initiatives proposed by the Secretary of the VA, particularly affecting Priority 7 and 8 veterans, drew vehement opposition from veterans’ service organizations. But at the House VA committee hearing the next day, new chairman Rep. Steve Buyer, R-IN, totally supported Secretary Nicholson’s argument for enrollment fees. Senator Buyer said “We’ve got an inequity in the system that we’re going to need to address.”

Secretary Nicholson presented a chart showing that military retirees under 65 pay $230 a month for individual Tricare Prime coverage and, thereafter, monthly Medicare Part B premiums now set at $78.20.

At both hearings, Secretary Nicholson stated that "VA’s proposed $70.8 billion budget could be $1.8 billion short if assumptions about new efficiencies and streamlining aren’t met and if Congress fails the cost-savings initiatives including limiting VA long-term care to veterans with service-connected disabilities and cutting VA nursing home capacity and state grants."

Neither Senators Craig nor Buyer criticized VA assumptions. Both did comment in a tight, wartime budget environment, VA health care and services must focus on the most worthy and most needy of veterans.

The representatives of veterans’ groups did sharply criticize the budget and its cost-savings initiatives, calling them "dishonest, aimed at driving veterans from the health care system, and doomed."

Representative Bob Filner, D-CA suggested Secretary Nicholson was abandoning the VA secretary’s traditional role of veterans’ advocate. He stated, “You’re not going to make the efficiencies and you know it. You’re not going to get the legislative proposals and you know it. You’re going to have less money than you want or need,” He continued “You ought to just state that.”

Buyer pressed representatives of seven veterans’ groups to acknowledge that an inequity in enrollment fees exists between military retirees and VA health care users. Only Richard Jones, National Legislative Chairman of the AMVETS described the targeted veterans as heroes “who answer our nation’s call and, with God’s grace, return from service whole and able to continue their lives without disabling injuries.” Giving them access to VA health care, unencumbered by annual fees, “is the least our nation can do for those on whom America depends to defend her liberty.”

Senator Buyer said co-pays and deductibles are effective tools to “modulate” health service usage. He said he felt no such “push- back” from retiree groups when Congress set Tricare fees.

Critics blamed administration priorities. The AMVETS Richard Jones pointed to $1 billion, four-year program passed last year to pay health care costs of illegal aliens.

Illegal aliens? Are they serious, illegal aliens receiving government healthcare? What is wrong with this picture?

Hello, can you help me get service connected approval for PTSD. I have a diagnosis from a ph.D Psychologist but have been turned down twice. Do you know what I can do to get an approval? jrgbg@aol.com

Your first move, to get service connected for PTSD is to go to the PTSD forum. Check the menu. Then you must compile the needed evidence.
Please read my book "Combat Veterans." Click below to go and take a look when you have the time.
http://www.geocities.com/dave_barker_amvet/index.html
Please visit and read the information and e-mail me on the link provided.
I will help you.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DaveBarker,

Can you get VA benifits for injurys incurred in basic training that dont go away. I blew out my ancle in basic and was forced to finish basic on the ancle so it still bothers me a year later?

I made sure to get all of my medical records transfered from the training base to my guard base but the guard will not release my records to me can the VA get the records from the guard. I am in the process of discharging myself from OCS, not wanting to put myself through basic (OCS) again, get injured and not be able to come home.

Just a simple update on VA budget increases vs cost inflation.
Since 2001 the VA budget has increased roughly 47%, while the cost of doing business for the VA has increased over 66%. The politicians have used the increase in budget, as a spin to justify the lack of VA healthcare to all honorably discharged veterans.
Priority group 8 was created to keep cost down. It has not and cannot solve the problem of rising medical cost due to inflation. The answer is for the politicians of both parties to increase the budget to care for those who have bourn the battle.

Saturday morning February 18th, at the Legislative Breakfast for the AMVETS Midwinter Conference, I sat with the Commander Department Of Michigan and his staff, along with Pennsylvania representatives. We discussed VA healthcare and the lack of treatment for honorably discharged veterans who happen to be employed.
The VA funding is our highest priority. We have problems in VA Healthcare and claims response time without proper funding, we will have even more problems with VA Healthcare and timely responses to claims issues, if we do not force our representatives in Congress to vote for more money to VA! These people are elected to represent us, not to be our overlords. They depend on us to keep them in office and they feel we are indebted to them. Well, we are in debt and "them" is the reason.

The reason Chu can chew is because the majority of Veterans are complacent. They want but don't give. In give I mean lean on their rep's at all levels to back off or go to the house.

The beer belly brigade just p&m at the local vet post but won't go beyond that. I'm surprised that we still have as many benefits that we do.

Yes I do what I preach. I'm sure I'm known as a PINTA. Some don't even reply anymore.

Incidentally I'm retired AF and a DAV. Been battling the VA for nearly 24 years. The BVA granted my appeal last Nov and I am still waiting on my award letter. VA customer service,what a joke, doesn't know where my file is. How convenient.

Hello Moe:
It can take 6 months for your file to get back to the original jurisdiction. That is where the appeal is finally worked into your award. It is a very slow process, due to lack of funding by the politicians.
Dave Barker
Ohio AMVETS SSO

Thanks Dave. You told me what the VA customer service would'nt or could'nt. Unfortunately, even after years of experience dealing with the VA I still get frustrated.

To compound the problem our regional office in New Orleans went bye-bye. They have temporaryily set up in Gretna,La but no one, including VA customer service, has a contact number. Snail mail only.

Davesince I don't see a suggestion area I'll mention here that there should be a way to edit posts. If there is I don't see it.

Moderator(s) might want to add a suggestion area.

Thread hijack over....