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DOLE SHALALA COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS:
JUST WHO'S ELIGIBLE? -- Many unknowns
swirl around veterans' disability reform.
Former Sen. Bob Dole
Former Sec. Donna Shalala
For more about the Dole-Shalala Commission, use
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Story here...
http://www.military.com/
features/0,15240,149138,00.html
Story below:
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Dole-Shalala: Who's Eligible?
by Tom Philpott
Unknowns Swirl Around Veterans’ Disability Reform
Jon Hovde lost his left arm, left leg and two fingers of his right hand
when his armored personnel carrier struck an antitank mine. The
20-year-old Army private was almost left for dead when a medic, checking
for a pulse in the mayhem, found none in Hovde’s severed arm.
This occurred almost 30 years ago in South Vietnam. Hovde spent
seven-and-a-half months’ recuperating in an Army hospital before being
medically retired. His initial VA disability check was $340 a month. His
first prosthetic leg, he recalled, was wooden and weighed “about 30
pounds.” He never saw a psychiatrist; post-traumatic stress wasn’t a
routine concern.
Today Hovde, 59, draws $3800 a month in VA compensation. His prosthetics
use embedded computer chips. When back and foot problems linked to his
war wounds cut short a promising business career, he adapted again. The
Minnesotan now gives motivational speeches nationwide.
But perhaps like many of the nation’s 2.8 million veterans drawing VA
disability compensation, Hovde sometimes gets upset at the wave of
benefit improvements being targeted at Iraq and Afghanistan war
veterans. Will they touch older veterans or leave them behind?
“It’s like a company saying, ‘You people who retired in the last five
years, you get an increase. But those who have been retired longer than
that, you get nothing,” Hovde said. “How fair is that?”
While recovering from his injuries, Hovde said he was told he would get
a $20,000 payment for his lost limbs. He never did. Yet the severely
wounded of Iraq and Afghanistan are getting traumatic injury awards.
They deserve it but so did he, Hovde said.
“I've long believed that combat wounded Purple Heart Award recipients
ought to be able to draw full military pay, plus full VA compensation.
That would add about $500 a month to my pay.”
Details on the many changes being pushed are easier to pin down than
answers to two other questions: who will be impacted and when will the
changes take effect. Next month the Veterans’ Disability Benefits
Commission (VDBC) will deliver more than 100 recommendations to the
president and Congress. All were voted on in public meetings. Most are
favorable to veterans. One would expand “concurrent receipt” of VA
disability benefits and military retired pay to all disabled retirees,
including those forced from service early for medical reasons. But who
would qualify?
Congress is expected to hold multiple hearings on the VDBC
recommendations starting next year. But this month, President Bush plans
a more immediate and positive signal to Iraq and Afghanistan disabled
veterans. He will propose legislation to implement disability
compensation reforms from the report of the President’s Commission on
Care of America’s Returning Wounded Warriors, also known as the
Dole-Shalala Commission.
The White House hopes to get this package to Capitol Hill in time for
inclusion in the 2008 defense authorization bill, which already includes
a another packet of provisions to benefit “wounded warriors.” Senate
floor debate on the defense bill is scheduled to resume next week.
The administration had intended that its disability reforms for Iraq and
Afghanistan veterans apply only to those injured in combat or in
combat-related training. That is being reconsidered in light of sharp
opposition from veterans groups and, congressional staffers say, key
lawmakers. The VDBC also unanimously endorsed Dole-Shalala with two
exceptions. One is the report’s focus only on fixing the system only for
combat-related disabilities.
Dole-Shalala seeks to end dual disability systems run by the departments
of defense and veterans affairs. Just like Hovde faced in 1968, current
service members who become disabled receive a physical evaluation and
disability rating from their service. If found unfit, they are medically
separated or retired and then typically go to the VA for another
physical and higher disability rating, this one based on any and all
service-related conditions. They usually must forfeit DoD compensation
to receive VA pay.
Dole-Shalala says veterans separated as unfit because of service-related
disabilities should get an immediate military annuity equal to 2.5
percent of basic pay times years served. The report says only veterans
retired early due to combat-related injuries should receive lifetime
TRICARE coverage from the military health system.
On top of that, their VA compensation for service disabilities would
come in two parts with features intended not merely to compensate for
lost earnings --the sole goal of current VA disability pay -- but to
encourage veterans to restore their working lives to the fullest extent
possible.
A “quality of life” disability payment would be based on severity of
disability and paid monthly for life. VA is working on payment levels.
A “transition” payment initially would be set high enough to support the
veteran and immediate family for up to four years while the veteran
receives vocational training, rehabilitation or attends school. Pay
incentives would discourage veterans from leaving voc-rehab training too
soon.
The initial transition payments would be replaced by compensation to
make up for earnings loss in the workplace due to disability. These
payments would be comparable to current VA disability compensation.
Veteran groups strongly oppose two features of the Dole-Shalala
proposal. One is a requirement that VA review a veteran’s disability and
earnings history every three years and adjust transition payments, up or
down, using a means test. Another would end transition payments for
earning loss when veterans turn 65 and presumably receive social
security.
Hovde said it isn’t possible until payment levels are known to judge
whether older veterans would want a choice to move under such a plan.
“I’m not sure I want the government telling me what my quality of life
is,” he said. “Most of these guys who do evaluations aren’t amputees and
haven’t got a clue.”
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Larry Scott --
