Veterans Affairs Department Archives

Does New Healthcare Bill Take Away Tax Credits from 7 Million Veterans?

May 21, 2017/in Government, Healthcare, Military Veteran, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Veteran News

By Debbie Gregory.

Democratic senators have reached across the aisle to urge Republican senators to protect veterans’ access to healthcare in their health care replacement bill, expressing fears that the House-passed proposal could be particularly dangerous for veterans.

“We have known for months that the GOP healthcare bill could strip roughly 7 million veterans of eligibility for healthcare tax credit assistance,” said Rep. Julia Brownley, (D-CA). “Despite warnings from our veterans service organizations, and pleas from veterans across the country, President Trump and Speaker Ryan have recklessly forged ahead despite the consequences,” stated Brownley. She continued, “While I am deeply concerned about many aspects of this bill, the rush to put politics ahead of people, and the impact it could have on our veterans as a consequence, is simply shameful.”

As the Senate creates its own version of the American Health Care Act, advocates claim the U.S. House of Representatives’ version hurts veterans by barring veterans eligible for care from the Veterans Affairs Department from receiving tax credits to buy insurance on the individual markets, reducing federal support for Medicaid and effectively ending Medicaid expansion.

The Paralyzed Veterans of America publicly opposed the bill. The group is particularly concerned about the end of a 6-percentage-point match enhancement for Community First Choice, which pays for home health aides for people with spinal cord injuries, dementia, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and more.

“If they’re non-service connected, they’re not going to have access to a state veterans’ home,” said Susan Prokop, senior associate advocacy director at Paralyzed Veterans of America.

Many veterans joined a Twitter campaign opposing the bill, using the hashtag #IAmAPreexistingCondition. Many said they were especially concerned about post-traumatic stress disorder being classified as a pre-existing condition, a change that would make their health care more expensive.

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Veterans’ Disability Claims Turning Around Faster

March 5, 2017/in Military Veteran, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Veterans Benefits

By Debbie Gregory.

The Veterans Affairs Department says the National Work Queue, an electronic workload management initiative designed to reduce the claims backlog and improve processing wait times, is helping the department turn around veterans’ disability claims more quickly.

The National Work Queue is a national workload approach for processing claims, which, in some cases, may result in a veteran’s claim being processed outside of their home state.

The National Work Queue automatically assigns a veteran’s claim to a Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) regional office that has available employees and expertise to process it. In the past, the department processed a veteran’s claim at the regional office in the state where he or she lived.

The backlog of disability claims is higher now than it was before VA stood up the National Work Queue because more veterans are submitting more claims.

The number of disability claims rose from roughly 76,000 in May 2016 — before VA fully implemented the National Work Queue, to nearly 101,000 as of Feb. 4, 2017, according to Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.), chairman of the House VA subcommittee.

“As we get more efficient, more veterans are aware of benefits that are available to them,” said Willie Clark, deputy undersecretary for field operations at VBA. “They come in and submit more claims.”

The backlog of claims waiting for initial review dropped from 56,000 pending cases in May 2016 to 18,000 by the end of January 2017.

In 2015, VA completed 45 percent of veterans’ claims within 125 days. As of January 2017, 66 percent of claims finished within the 125-day standard.

So far in 2017, the average number of days for VBA to make the first developmental action dropped from 25 to 10. The average time for a rating decision fell from 29 to 16 days. Award time dropped from eight to four days, and the authorization time fell from four to two days.

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Post 9/11 Disabled Vets Still Opting for VA Health Care

December 2, 2016/in Government, Military Veteran, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Veteran News, Veterans Benefits

By Debbie Gregory.

It appears as though the Veterans Affairs (VA) wait-times scandal has not curbed the flow of disabled veterans who want care through the department.

In fact, the percentage of disabled post-9/11 vets with health insurance through the Veterans Affairs Department has increased 11 percent over the last few years.

According to a survey done by the Wounded Warrior Project, 71 percent of injured Iraq and Afghanistan veterans said they had VA health care coverage in 2016, compared to 66 percent in 2015, and 59 percent in 2014.

The 2014 Veterans’ Access, Choice, and Accountability Act expanded health insurance options for many vets, allowing them to use private health care providers in cases where VA could not meet their needs.

The survey revealed the most common injuries and health problems respondents reported: post-traumatic stress disorder (77 percent); sleep issues (76 percent); back, neck or shoulder problems (72 percent); and depression (70 percent).

But all of the news wasn’t favorable: disabled vets who participated in the survey reported difficulties accessing physical and mental health care through the VA and outside providers. Thirty-five percent of respondents reported mental health care access problems, with the most common reason cited being “personal schedules that conflicted with the hours of operation of VA health care.” The fourth most commonly-cited reason was “difficulty in scheduling appointments” (32 percent). For those seeking physical health care, 40 percent of those with VA and other types of health care said they’d experienced problems scheduling appointments, the top reason in that category, while 45 percent of those respondents with VA as their primary health care provider cited difficulties with scheduling appointments.

Thirty-seven percent of those using VA as their primary health provider cited a lack of availability in VA specialty clinics (compared to 31 percent of all respondents), while 37 percent of respondents using VA as their primary health care said the department’s requirements made it difficult to get referrals for necessary specialty treatment for physical problems, compared to 31 percent for all respondents with those issues.

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