Originally Posted By DoorKicker:

If he has Tricare, then he is either retired, or still actively serving in the Reserves, or his wife is one of those two options.

Nobody that serves "a few hours" as you suggest, would be qualified for Tricare on that merit alone...

Don't forget, military service was open to everyone that met the qualifications, and our military has been 100% voluntary for quite some time

Originally Posted By Kitulu:

This plus one... by the time I retired I had over 1800 pages of medical records. At one of my visits at around the 18 year mark, the PFC that was doing the intake exam asked me "damn, SSG... how are you even still in the Army?!"

Me: "Willpower, hate, and inertia."

Originally Posted By BooJangles:
Funny how a bunch of them will shit on "the poors" for being on welfare, but scream that they are owed life long healthcare from the government because they spent 4 years state side and never saw combat.
If you get injured on the job, your injury should be taken care of.  Got the betus because you are a fat lazy slob, you should pay your own way then.

Originally Posted By buck19delta:


Yup, my medical records COMPLETELY fill up a jansport back pack, approx 10” thick / 25lbs worth, like packing around an entire ream of paper.

Originally Posted By ramairthree:


Thanks, this is exactly the kind of situation that is a foreign concept to me and hundreds of people I was enlisted with, an officer with, that were veterans at other times, that ETSd, that retired, etc.

So, say someone did an enlistment, got a foot broken when something fell on it,
Separated  a shoulder while doing an obstacle course, etc.
Re-upped or extended and also have some back pain and sprained an ankle, etc. ETSd,
and racked up 30% of service connected stuff.

Myself, and everyone of those hundreds of other people are like-

What?  Full VA health care for life paying for everything and never need private insurance?
When did that become a thing?  Even full on tricare retirees have copays, costs, etc.
I get they do it for 100% disabled vets - some legit and a bunch of wazoo sketchy “100%” types,
But when did everyone getting out the service start expecting full medical coverage and never needing insurance, etc.
Sure, they told people joining if they retired they would get full medical for life, but that was not cost free, there were space available issues, etc. and told us VA would cover stuff that happened to us even if we didn’t retire, but never needing to have insurance or the VA paying for everything medical was never something we were promised, etc.  When did that concept come about?

Originally Posted By FreefallRet:
When they stop giving lazy ass fuckers medicade and welfare then we can talk about what kind care and money our veterans deserve.

What you are seeing is a reduced veteran population with the same number of VA clinics open.

On top of caring for veterans they need people using these clinics to keep them open.

To do this veterans get increased care and benefits.

No veterans being treated, no clinics and VA employees losing their job.

If a clinic goes away it may not come back, next war might have tremendous casualties.

We need VA clinics to be in operation just in case.

People that don't like it, the military has jobs available. If the VA has issues we can always end welfare to keep them going.

Veterans earned their benefit's unlike immigrants and most welfare recipients.

If I had my way disabled combat vets wouldn't pay taxes or property tax.

Originally Posted By ramairthree:


1- not complaining about veterans receiving benefits
2- congrats- zero issues with your retirement check / tricare/ etc.
3- zero issues with your 100% legit disability pay
4- zero issues with your legit 100% disability VA medical care
5- I’m not crying.
6- I’ve lacked nothing

I’m not sure the actual question keeps getting avoided

Originally Posted By DoorKicker:


These people are not getting VA or tricare unless they are majorly scamming the system.  If they were not scamming the VA, they would just be scamming SS.  Either way, they would be scamming the system.

You must be retired to continue Tricare, and you must have documented service connected injury or illness to get VA

Originally Posted By Lou_Daks:

Exemptions work boths ways - to make it easier for service-related injuries to get bennies BEFORE the 24 months is up, and to make it harder to get bennies for early-out.

For the vast number of vets, they serve 24 months and they are IN.

Note the words MINIMUM DUTY REQUIREMENT preceeding the exemptions.  Those words have meaning.

Originally Posted By Lou_Daks:

We agree.

If you are injured on duty, you are exempt from the 24 months requirement.  IOW you get the bennies even if you aren't in for 24 months.  As it should be.

Originally Posted By pdm:



Well….that's great. In my case I had a year as an 11 and then 20 as an 18 in SOF, both traditional SF and another unit. I was an Assaulter for 11 years as well as a breacher. I've been exposed hundreds of close proximity explosive blast waves, within a few feet, and been knocked unconscious multiple times by them. Got so close that I'd cough blood. Flash bangs out the wazoo. I've shot 100's of thousands of rounds from 10.5" bbls, most of them right next to dudes.   Weapons fired would include just about every infantry weapon in the inventory including AT and mortars and lots of them….also tons of Warsaw pact weapons. I have 600+ jumps….200 static and 400 MFF….and so on…you would think that the VA would have a deep understanding of what this type of job entails, wouldn't you? Well they don't or at least they won't admit it.  

BTW, none of the injuries associated with the above were documented other than at the team level.

The premise that if it's not documented it don't happen is absolute bullshit. There have been plenty of studies done on Operator mentality. You're asking men to go do things that there's a high degree of likelihood they'll get fucked up on or not come back from but you're also expecting them to run to sick call?  What fucking planet is the VA on?  Does this nation want meat eaters that gladly go in harm's way to do bad things to evil people or do they want snivelers that go to sick call when they stub their toe?  You can't have both.

Now you look at pro sports….3 or 4 concussions are considered significant with a high degree of likelihood of CTE (TBI). The average assaulter gets 3 or 4 a fucking day…for years and years but the VA doesn't care what medical science says. They find every excuse they can to deny medical care for injuries that are so fucking obvious that only an agency with criminal malice would ignore them.  

In my case it took a Congressional investigation to get my TBI diagnosis resolved. They hid paperwork, "lost" exams and slow rolled and obfuscated for years…and lied about it. They got caught but you know what? No one, and I mean no one, was held accountable. Just business as usual at the VA….slow roll and hope the Vet kills himself. Mine wasn't about money either. I was already at 100% from other injuries. I wanted the TBI noted so that I have access to emerging treatments to combat the dementia that most certainly is coming.

So I had some fun with them, especially when they "lost" an exam. The dude on the phone said there was nothing he could do, sorry. Well I explained that then this was no longer about my disability. This was now about loss of my HIPPA act information. Once I said that there was a pause and then I was told that he's have to get back to me. Magically they found it a few weeks later but then told me it couldn't be used for some reason….anyways that led to Congress.

So you're right the VA doesn't give a fuck. Knowing that SOCOM told the VA fuck you and formed Care Coalition. I spoke to Uncle Bill about that years ago, thanking him for what he did for the command and his response was that Care Coalition was perhaps the proudest accomplishemnt he had while being CDR…he was right.

edit: I almost forgot. Disability benefits aren't approved or denied through the VA. These are handled by the VBA and guess what?  There is no Patient Advocacy or IG in the VBA. None. No accountability though normal channels. Even when my situation was resolved by my Congressman there was no accounatbility.