Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office (“CBO”) released a report regarding the trends and policy options as it relates to providing veterans with their benefits. In general, the report describes an (unsurprising) surge in veterans who are receiving disability compensation benefits – nearly $54 billion worth in 2013, or about 70% of the Veterans Benefits Administration’s (“VBA”) total mandatory spending. In total, 16% of all veterans in 2013 received VA disability compensation.
These figures represent a 55% increase in veterans receiving benefits from 2000 to 2013, which the report attributes to the following factors:
- Changes in policy that make it easier for veterans to claim benefits. For example, the VA has designated additional conditions that have been linked to exposure to Agent Orange as presumptive for veterans who served in Vietnam.
- The recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The veterans of these wars represent a significant share of veterans receiving disability compensation. Part of this may be attributed to the combat-related injuries stemming from these wars. Also, these veterans appear to be more informed regarding their entitlements to disability compensation and the means to pursuing benefits.
- Labor market conditions. Limited employment opportunities in recent years may have prompted some veterans to apply for disability benefits to replace lost earnings.
The CBO report identifies options for changing the disability compensation program, falling under either modifying the VA’s processes for identifying service-connected disabilities or revising compensation by changing payment amounts, changing coordination with other federal benefits, or by changing the tax treatment of payments. The end goal is clear: to reduce the burden to Uncle Sam.
Some of these options are set forth as follows, and forgive my editorializing:
Option #1: Institute a time limit on initial applications. As a veterans advocate who got her start in this field with her father’s VA disability claim – over thirty years after his service – I am completely opposed to this. VA disability compensation is an entitlement, not a privilege, and if a veteran wants to wait ten years to apply for his benefits (which would result in the VA not having to pay him for ten years), that’s his right.
Option #2: Require the VA to expand its use of reexaminations. When it comes to temporary ratings, these reexaminations are used to ensure that a veteran’s disability rating truly reflects the degree of disability. The CBO notes that these reexaminations are not often scheduled or performed as is required.
Option #3: Change the positive-association standard for declaring presumptive conditions. By presuming that certain medical conditions are caused by medical service, this removes from the veteran the burden of establishing the connection between their military service and the onset of a medical condition. However, the issue is that these presumptions are established only after a lengthy process involving medical studies, findings, and regulatory changes that can take years. Doesn’t this mean that this is a safe presumption to make? By requiring veterans to present other factors to establish the presumption that a condition is service-connected, this potentially creates unnecessary paperwork. And multiply that additional paperwork by the number of veterans this affects….
Option #4: Restrict individual unemployability benefits to veteran who are younger than the full retirement age for social security. Under this option, the VA would no longer make IU payments to veterans who were past the Social Security’s full retirement age. However, the VA and the Social Security Administration (SSA) are two entirely different federal departments that award compensation based on different sets of criteria. You do not have to be service-disabled in order to received SSA benefits, but this option essentially cuts off benefits for anyone who is service-disabled by virtue of them becoming eligible to receive a different type of benefit from the SSA. Again, I reiterate – disability compensation because you are wounded in service is an entitlement.
Option #5: Supplement payments to veterans who have mental disorders. The rationale here is that because payments to veterans with mental disorders may not adequately make up for lost earnings, these veterans should be eligible for more money. I am completely on board with this – mental disorders affect veterans much more significantly than veterans with physical disorders (I know of several 100% physically-disabled veterans who can still work, while this is not the case with 100% mentally-disabled veterans). This group of veterans is struggling, and additional compensation would help.
Option #6: Tax VA benefits. If VA benefits were treated as income for purposes of individual tax returns, there’s no questioning that a significant chunk of money will be paid back into the system. However, for those veterans barely getting by on their VA disability compensation benefits, this type of change could create a catastrophic effect. For those who are TDIU, for example, it’s the equivalent of getting a 30% pay cut.
These aren’t the only options covered by the CBO report. You can access it in its entirety here. Do you agree with some of these suggestions? Disagree? Feel free to post a comment below.
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Amazingly, there is no proposal “Don’t get into poorly planned, poorly executed wars of choice, and long-term military occupations based on false pretenses.” I guarantee, if we avoided that, that would significantly reduce the total # of claims, and the total compensation of claims.
War involvement has nothing to do with service connected disabilities for many veterans with service connected disabilities. If a veterans becomes involved with a disease or illness or any disabling chronic condition, involvement with war is not a requirement. I have written more than 2500 claims and almost half involved veterans who did not receive their condition due to war injuries. We are not discussing poorly executed wars that the Current Administration has kept us weakly involved in with poor planning.
Sarah,
I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of the VA. Just how hard is it for them to realize that they are the cause of all the problems. I believe that their salaries should be cut on the assumption that they do not do their jobs properly. Let’s see how that flies. They seem to be working on how little they can pay us and get away with it. If a business owner did that, he/she would lose the business very swiftly.
God bless and keep up the good work!
Politicians say how much they owe the Military Personnel while at the same time they are taking away the promise made years ago. Our Medical is a joke and our retirement has been change several times…..
Can a country ever truly repay all that it owes to its Veterans? If and when any number of politicians want to go and carry a 180 pound ruck sack and another 40-60 pounds of combat gear, food and water + weapon and ammunition – and then live in the most horrible conditions imaginable (mosquitoes, flies, gnats, hot baking sun, cold nights, no shower for up to 40 days possibly, no clean clothes, eating MREs for all 3 meals for months, getting shot at, having IEDs going off all around you, losing buddies and being separated from your family for months or over a year and facing multiple deployments – as well as potentially never coming back home or coming back messed up… well, you tell me what you think that’s worth?
What does a dad or mom tell their kid whose 3 year’s old… “Daddy can you play with me and chase me some more?” “No son, I can’t right now, I’m having trouble breathing and my head hurts very badly” (because of the exposure to blasts from IEDs and other explosions and the fumes from burn pits). Or how’s about when the dad can’t even remember his son’s birthday party and we he sees photos of it from time to time – he asks. who took these photos, because the dad didn’t even remember being the one who took the photos at the party.
I submit that even such a discussion involving taking away any benefits, or limiting the benefits or taxing the benefits of any Veteran is treasonous, vindictive and shameful. I submit that before you take anything away from a Veteran, you might want to consider stripping benefits away from thugs and those who are here illegally – then perhaps you might find more than enough money to fund your special interests without making an attempt to rob what has rightfully been earned by our Veterans.
One of my blog followers relayed that apparently the CBO got so much heat for this report that it removed its original report from its website and added a “vet friendly” cover page and some supporting cites from veterans (with no changes to content).
My understanding is that while the full report is now unavailable on the CBO’s page, many angry veterans and advocates downloaded it for distribution. Another good article and commentary on this is available at: http://militaryadvantage.military.com/2014/08/cbo-proposes-huge-cuts-to-veterans-disability-program/. This contains both the original and the revised report, for comparison.
I wrote my own blog about this, called The Canary in the Coal Mine for Veterans Disability Compensation. This report is just the beginning. These “options” will come up in future budget fights.
Notably absent from the options to reduce veteran disability compensation, is not to enter into long-term poorly conceived and executed wars based on nation-building.
The politicians want their wars for free. They don’t want to pay the long-term legacy healthcare costs of wars.
The timing of the release of this report is also significant. It was released on Aug 7th, the date that President Obama signed into law the Veterans Access, Accountability, and Choice Act. Additionally, this report was requested by the House Veterans Affairs Committee in July 2014 after it received the McCain-Sanders bill in June 2014. This report was part of the price of getting the House to 1) pass the law before the August recess 2) confirm the new Secretary of the VA (and some other nominations that had been held up, including the Asst Secretary for Plans and Policy, Linda Schwartz).
Even if they have taken down the report, or put some lipstick on this pig, the substance of this report is going to come up in the future. Veterans are a shrinking demographic. Demographics are destiny.
Thucydides wrote in his History of the Peloponnesian War “The politicians soon learned it was easier to honor the dead than care for the living.” It was true in the 6th century BCE Athens, and it is true in the 21st century CE in the United States.