It's not an unreasonable question, but I think the answers are pretty complicated.

There are people out there who will put so much effort into gaming the system that they just as easily could have just earned their own way, and that sucks.

But there are also people out there who get out of the military and completely fail to transition to civilian life for one reason or another, and that also sucks, but in a completely different way.

Veterans are more likely to be homeless, more likely to have chronic illnesses, more likely to commit suicide, live statistically shorter lives, and all kinds of stuff. The VA is supposed to help with those sorts of problems, and sometimes that means going beyond what is and is not service connected.

Personally, I got away from the VA health system as fast as I could, but I understand a lot of guys can't or won't do that.

Now I’m wondering about other things - example Arlington has requirements other federal cemtaries do not but retiree used to qualify but as far as I know no longer does

I have gone to a few bases, presented my VA.gov card and got waved right in.

I have gone onto Great Lakes Navy Base, Ft McCoy, Ft Snelling and used the PX with no issues.

I believe 100% disabled have all the same access as a retiree.

100% disabled is a whole other topic.  There are guys with objectively, inarguable, full on 100% ratings.
There are guys with a mix of objective, inarguable stuff and stuff that seems like regular, normal stuff anyone gets.
And there are people with full on subjective, eye rolling stuff that gets them 100%.

Everyone here seems to be fired up I am against taking care of service connected stuff.  Which is not the case.

Nobody seems to be really answering my actual question.

I spent an entire life in a social, familial, and professional circle of military people and vets who never considered being in the military for a couple of years meant getting full lifetime medical care for everything.

Yet there seem to be a ton of people that have that expectation.  Whether they were drafted or enlisted for a couple of years in 1955, or are a “Vietnam era vet”, a Cold War vet, GWOT era with or without combat, etc.  

Until the last several years, I didn’t realize this was a thing.  

The OP assumes every one is as rich as he is when I went in to the service back in the 60s I had no idea of the VA, when I got back I began to notice some poor poors without any medical help, and they were veterans, injured in duty. I say they deserve nedical help, when they got drafted they were in great shape.

The VA is my only healthcare provider. By and large, between the VA and Community Care I get excellent healthcare. It was not always this way. I watched my Dad, a Combat Vet from Korea and Vietnam get treated like $#!+ from the VA, left for dead, turned over to Hospice with Stage 4 cancer from being irradiated or agent oranged decide to seek help at the Mayo clinic in Jax Florida. VA left him to die. Mayo cured his stage 4 and gave him nearly 20 more years. He died of his 13th heart attack. The VA has come a long way in the last 15 or so years.

LOL

Individual conditions are rated based on a severity/impact matrix. There are situations where the VA will say a veteran has X condition, that condition is service connected, but the severity of the condition is so mild that they say it doesn't impact the veteran's day to day life, so it gets rated at 0%. What this means is that the condition gets all the care of any other service connected issue, and the rating for the condition can be escalated if it worsens, but the vet doesn't receive compensation for it.

Then there's the matter of VA math. If a vet has a 20% condition and two 10% conditions, they don't get a 40% rating. That rating might only be 30% or 20% because... reasons. There might be some guys out there that only have 0% conditions, or maybe there's a guy with one that has a 10%er, but is still rated at 0% overall for some reason.

Is there a reason he uses the VA instead of a military hospital or a Civi place through Tricare?

I know a shitload of retirees.

They would go to Bragg or Benning and have a mil ortho do their Achilles or shoulder or go to Dartmouth or whatever for their back surgery via tricare and not even consider the VA.  Or I guess you could have VA pay for a civi place as well.

Are there some huge VA places that have great ortho and Neurosurg and stuff?

During his second inaugural address, President Lincoln (the first Republican president) vowed “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.”

Like FreeFallRet mentioned above, we have a dwindling veteran population, especially compared to the WW2 generation. VA facilities and staff still have to be available to take care of service-connected veterans and that often means they need to maintain certain credentials.

You mention delivering babies. The female veteran population is growing and with that comes more service-connected issues unique to women. That means the VA has to have an increasing staff of OB/GYN's. Those doctors certainly have to maintain proficiencies, so why not open their services to the population they're already serving, rather than make the patients seek treatment elsewhere while making their doctors care for other patients in order to maintain credentials necessary to their profession? Not to mention, maybe some of those female veterans have service-connected heath issues which complicate their pregnancies, such as internal injuries or exposure to hazardous chemicals/burn pits and it's easier for them to keep their medical records and appointments within one system, rather than hoping a bureaucratic agency can successfully share records with outside providers in a timely enough matter that those vets can seamlessly flow between two or more providers during their pregnancies.

A couple of folks have mentioned the idea of sending vets to local providers. They're obviously speaking from a position of ignorance, yet speaking just the same. the VA has been doing so for awhile now under the VA Community Care system. I've personally taken advantage of it several times, as the nearest VA facility is more than an hour away. Guess what, the bills for those civilian providers comes out of the VA's budget. Another issue with that is the fact that many, if not most, health care providers complain of being overworked and understaffed. What would happen if we did dump EVERY vet on those providers, rather than just a percentage of those who don't live within a reasonable distance of a VA facility?

For those bitching about veterans getting care for non-service connected matters, those vets who do so pay copays and for any meds prescribed for non-service connected issues, they're not getting it for free.

As for the VA's increasing budget, has anyone seen a hospital anywhere whose budget is decreasing while providing the same level of care?

Well, thanks for reminding me to call VA and get my CT scan scheduled OP. You do realize that VA wants veterans to use the system. Retirees have Tricare and can use any provider they please. The VA now wants veterans like me in the system. DD214 with an honorable from the Cold War era making less than the amount for your area - automatic approval.

I served my country when I was young and dumb. Then I worked my entire adult life, paying plenty of State and Federal taxes. Now that the government offers programs I qualify for that pay for life and its expenses, I don't say no.

VA Healthcare, Medicare and Social Security - man I'm just shitting in tall cotton here.

Attached File

Are you former POW, PH recipient or as I learned in this thread 10 minutes ago - 0 percent rating?

Yeah guy in my unit got hit in a Husky and medical chaptered out at 100% while I met a lab medic who never deployed and did 4 years in a hospital in Germany at the Washington DC VA who had a 50% rating for mental health issues

Wild

the VA should be shit canned and ran just like medicare/medicaid.

@CarmelBytheSea

Here are the requirements to shop at exchanges

They include:

As I posted on page 1 I just got no answers or even useful input on your question tbh

The VA already bills Medicare. Most people don't know that....

The military didn't make me pick up a can of Copenhagen.

Start posting and sending messages on the VA Twitter and Facebook.

Then call your congressman.

I had my first VA appointment the day after I retired.

My two sons had theirs within a month of PCSing.

Did you apply for VA care 12 months after getting out? What did your local VA/VFW/DAV say about this?

My son had a issue and that shit was fixed quick after some PM to the VA Facebook page with a follow up to his Congressman.

VA was blowing up my sons and my phone trying to get it handled.

If that doesn't work hit your local paper or news station. Those folks love to drag the VA.

I enlisted as an E1 at 17.  I spent weekends at my grandparents on the weekends,  With a tub in the shed with hot water off a wood stove for baths, the house heated by that wood stove, and an outhouse.
While my mother waiting tables for extra money on the weekends and my dad was a logger.
Killed in an accident when I was 12.
I am not sure why you think I grew up rich.

After a four year enlistment I used the GI Bill to go to college and got married.  My wife worked full time and we had insurance through her work.

I went back on active duty for a while after that.

I’m affluent and comfortable now, but I certainly did not grow up rich.

And I have not once insinuated people with duty related issues not get assistance.

kind of a loaded question.

Because I don't think many until very recently even knew VA healthcare was a thing.

I remember rumblings about it in the Obamacare days. So I am going to assume that it officially came to be in it's current capacity around then but who knows.

I know I recently discovered it's existence.  It's still not as easy to navigate as something like this should be though.

I know when I ETS'd there was talk about individually extending Tricare (for a monthly cost).  So I think the official VA Healthcare is somewhat new.

Here's how VA math works:

Veteran GI Joe starts out as a 100% person.

Joe is rated 30% service connected for the condition which caused him to be put out of the Army.

Joe is now 70% a person (100-30%).

Joe gets rated 20% for an additional condition.

That 20% is multiplied by the 70% of Joe's remaining personage, giving him 14%.

The VA adds 30% and 14% to now rate Joe 40%, because they round numbers.

70%-14% is 56%, though, making Joe a 56% person.

Joe gets rated 10% for something else.

10% of 56% is 5.6%, which is added to Joe's already existing 44%, making Joe 49.6% disabled, which is rounded up to a 50% service connected rating, but leaving Joe a 50.4% person (56-5.6).

Joe gets another 10% rating. 10% of 50.4% is 5.04%.

5.04% added to 49.6% equals 54.64%, which is rounded down to a 50% service-connected rating-so Joe's rating hasn't changed at all due to the last condition being rated service-connected.

5.04% is subtracted from 50.4%, leaving Joe a 45.36% person for any additional ratings.

----------

Let's say Joe gets two 50% ratings. To most people, 50% + 50% equals 100%. But not to the VA. It equals 80%.

100%-50% rating=50% remaining.

The next 50% rating is not 50% of the initial 100%, it's 50% of the remaining 50%, or 25%. 50% + 25% = 75%, or, actually 80% since the VA rounds.

So I have realized.

This was meant to be more of a
“Hey, why does the chick that processed paper work for three years stateside with no illnesses or injuries think the VA is going to cover her lifelong pregnancies, her lifelong primary care,  the blood clot she got in her leg after she fell and broke a hip 40 years after her ETS, etc.?

Or,
Why does the guy that got kicked out with an other than in AIT with five months of service and zero service connected problems think the VA is going to cover his dialysis and heart failure 35 years later ?

This is kind of a foreign concept to me.
Why would anyone do a career to get medical benefits when you don’t even have to finish an enlistment for them?

Is this something you are familiar with, how long has it been like this, who thinks this?”

But has become an -
“OP wants to spend money on a bunch of woke stuff and knows nothing about military service and hates veterans and thinks .mil shouldn’t take care of anything they broke.”

We should take better care of our veterans.  It's a damn shame how they've been treated.

Why can’t we have a system where…

All service related health issues are covered 100% for life.
No service related health issue, coverage stops when you separate (like most jobs)
Take the savings used to cover others at 100% for no deployment (my father in law) and use it to give the troops a huge raise and boost other quality of life items for all enlisted.
With the smaller scale of the system, allow the care recipients to select their provider of choice and pay that provider like insurance.

OP, you're looking at it all wrong. Veterans benefits have always been a welfare boondoggle.

Read "The High Cost of Good Intentions." It tells the story of welfare in America. It all started with veterans benefits.

Preach! And we weren't drafted, we fucking volunteered.

Oh look, a bunch ignorant ass posts from people who don't know what they're talking about.

Prices are not that great, tax free is the best part.

When I get a new TV I have it delivered as shipping is free and it's tax free.

Nor did they make me start smoking. That's a choice I made. But was I swayed to do so because of the policy of giving smokers extra breaks? I'm not going to say that's necessarily true in my case, but it could be in others.

I have two 0% conditions. I doubt I'll do anything with them, but they occasionally annoy me, and at least they're on paper.

I have a couple of conditions that have actual values. One of those is definitely getting worse. I don't want to go back and play VA games for re-evaluation, but I might have to in the next year or three.

It's a great place to get a check from as a civilian worker, might not need to go into the office and GS14/15 pay is great, so is the vacation.  I have two in-laws there, Skate city.

To that specific question.  It's just how things like this work.  The military spends so much time downplaying everything while you are in to maintain your ability to deploy.  If you're a good soldier you often just go with it.  So years down the road.  Something you've been living with for years suddenly becomes something that should be dealt with.  Except because they downplayed it the records don't reflect much.  So the rules are loose to make sure those guys are taken care of.  But as with all things that lends to the eternal grift questionable service appears to generate.

Basically we cover the dirt bags so we can help the people who really need it.  The dirtbags would grift medicare or another program if it wasn't the VA. So I try not to think too much about it.

True

VA has to maintain buildings and pay employees (many of which are veterans).

Problem remains if there is ever a public healthcare crisis and now the gov has lost the internal capability to care for its veterans.

Then you have all the veteran homes and cemeteries at some VA hospitals.

Now look at the US dollars sent overseas vs sent to maintain VA hospitals.

Now look at the people added to the overstressed healthcare example.

Prime example is me, at 55yrs old I haven't been admitted to a civ hospital or dentist but once since I was 18yrs old. All my care has been military or VA.

Lots of military folks just like me.

Now imagine all the vets getting civ hospital bills when they are to stupid to do the VA paperwork.

The waste is unbelievable.  Currently there are some budget issues affecting VA hospitals.  Hiring is stopped or reduced drastically, all the incentives to retain direct patient care positions are eliminated, beds are being closed due to staffing shortages. Our VA director claims we have a net hire surplus of around 700 people in recent years but there are no nurses, techs, social workers, doctors.  Where is all the money going?  Where are all the people working?

I go to the VA ER vs my local ER.

wait time is 1-2 hours at the VA vs 3-5 at the local hospital.

If they can't handle my issues the take me to higher care just like our local shit ER would do.

Once I had a bad kidney stone, called the VA and they were waiting to take me back as I entered the door.

They slammed me with IVs and pain meds and then a CT. Long story short, within three hours of showing up I passed the stone and was on my way home.

My VA may be an anomaly, but the care thus far has been good.

Congress passed a law that essentially states all service connected veterans with official VA ID identifying them as such allows you post access to the PX/class 6/ MWR/ etc.

I paid into that so I want mine.

I don't think the AIT guy has eligibility. I think you have to have 24 months or a medical discharge.

Beyond that, think of this kind of like the justice system: would your rather see a guilty man walk free or an innocent man do life (or worse)?

The US military has an extremely long and well established history of subjecting service-members to awful things that have nothing to do with wartime service. Burn pits, nuclear bomb tests, Lejeune water, asbestos, anthrax vaccines, all manner of environmental hazards... etc.

The number of veterans that developed health problems related to these things and that subsequently suffered and died without treatment and/or compensation is almost certainly in the millions.

Just like the justice system, I think most people would rather see a turd game the system than a veteran in need get left without help.

I don't know a single veteran that feels that way.  Every veteran I know that has VA health care also has a service-connected disability.  Everyone else has Tricare for Life as a retiree or has no disability and employer-based health care like I do.

Have your congressman call you, OP.

Employers used to give their workers real medical coverage. Now most basically give the lowest cut rate shit you could get for the same price through the state.  Why would someone who can go to the VA want to opt in for that?

My last job acted so suprised I didn't opt in for their shit coverage at a terrible price. I showed my supervisor what I have and what I pay and she was  dumb founded how bad she was getting screwed taking the companies medical plan 🤣

My grandfather spent his last days in a veterans home due to dementia that demanded constant care and I have nothing but good things to say about his care but at the same time there has to be a better way to do it than have two parallel systems of care, especially when rural hospitals are going under at a frightening rate. Having had friends and family members as both healthcare providers and vets in the VA system it's a complete roll of the dice.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Reed_Army_Medical_Center_neglect_scandal

This wasn't that long ago and Vietnam era vets like my dad all have heard terrible stories about the VA from friends that are now in their 80s.

I'm definitely glad you got good care but understand there are people your age that had rats crawling over them in a VA facility.

If some Americans are getting government subsidized healthcare, why aren't all of us getting it?

You read their files?

It's available to you at any recruiting office.

Because they agreed to a contract that included it. If you didn't too bad I guess.

My aunt is pissed because the VA will not do anything for my uncle who is in a special home for Parkinson's ($10K a month). According to her they said just because he served in the AF over seas he was not in a combat zone during war time thus he is not entitled to assistance.

Another friend started receiving a disability check at age 89 after claiming hearing damage from his time in the Navy during Korea, He claims his hearing was damaged from sitting between two engines on some small boat during his last few months of service. He said he wanted out of the Navy so he never made a claim. He hit up the VA at age 89 with his claim, he offered no proof that he suffered this hearing damage from his service, just his word.

Well his trip to the VA and some testing resulted in new hearing aids, a back check for several thousand, and a monthly check for over $1,000. He did not live more than a year after receiving the benefits but apparently he left decades of disability money on the table.

I just do not understand how the system allows for such a payment decades later, especially given he spent a lifetime after his service not protecting his own hearing. He operated equipment and shot all sorts of guns without hearing protection. To me it would be like someone saying my service in the military gave me lung cancer but the VA discarding the fact that person spent a lifetime smoking and did not start smoking until after they left the military.