Private Insurance/100% T/p

[Michael]

Good Day: I just received a letter from West Haven, VT VA, requesting that I sign a release so they can bill my private insurance for recent treatment. I am a 100% T/P rated vet(past 6 years). I have received all my treatment from this VA. 1. Should I sign this release? 2. Can VA bill my insurance with my type of 100%T/P rating. 3. Any other advice on this issue? Michael

[john999]

If you use BC/BS outside the VA the VA does not pick up the deductible. The only thing the VA does is to charge your private insurance when you go to the VA for treatment. If you are over 50% you don't have a co-pay at the VA if you have insurance or not. There is really no good reason to use the VA if you have good private insurance except to document your disabiliy and to get cheap drugs. I go to stay in the loop and to use their jive-ass pain clinic. Getting pain meds is getting harder in Florida as the state and DEA are just giving the pain doctors hell. They have the nerve to bill vets for medical care. If they can't bill you directly they bill your insurance. That pisses me off! My goldfish died too. If the VA is going to charge vets for care why have one? I know an effort was made to actually charge service connected vets for the SC stuff but that died in Congress. Just the fact that this was tried gets me mad as hell. Why not just kick us in the yarbels and be done with it? When the VA was just for service connected injuries I never went. Now that it is for all vets SC and NSC I can't get through the door even when I want to go just to get a dental check-up. We priority one vets are suppose to get the fastest care. If that is fast I hate to see slow.

[VetsLady]

We had the same experience at the local VAMC. They can bill for NSC treatment but, then my husand is 70% not 100%....it's a disgrace if the VA doesn't pay for 100%.

Did anyone see the 60 minutes segment on the Medicare billing scandal that aired last night? Unbelieveable. Medicare Madeoff's.

[Pete53]

I did not see it but I am glad when they show any kind of abuse to Medicare cause that helps clean it up.

My Medicare Advantage has paid over 30 thousand in last 2 years.Most of it was angioplasty and a stent that I would have had to wait months for at VA.

I have come to the point in my life that I am going to use VA for Routine and my own for surgery and when I don't want Med Students deciding my fate.

It seems that all the time we get less and less options.

[john999]

I guess I see an advantage in staying in the loop with the VA. Worst case you would have to use them for some major uncovered medical expense. I do know they provide Human Growth Hormone to a vet I know who had his circuts burned out in an electrical accident in the military. It would cost him 6000 bucks a month he said if not for the VA.

The other advantage I see is you have an easy way to show continuity of care for any condition. You can also document potential service connected secondary conditions from SC conditions. I have done this with AO conditions. If I was working I would probably not bother even going to the VA, but since I depend on the VA check each month I want to document every single problem I have, and I want them to pay for it.

I don't see getting by-pass surgery at my VAMC. I know it is good for some, but not for me. My VAMC got in trouble for doing too many on really old and sick vets because they were training medical students. What better way than by using a poor, old vet who is already half-dead from alcoholism or incinerated lungs? That never stopped them from cutting the people open like a fish market gutting fish.

[Commander Bob]

I guess I see an advantage in staying in the loop with the VA.

I agree and admire you John999, for staying in the loop. Your vast knowledge and first hand observations have enhanced the overall quality & ability of Hadit to function. I wrote the VA off, as a bad debt many years ago. However, I feel compelled to get back in the trenches, for the sake of my fellow disabled vets. Some disabilities, like the misdiagnoses of PTSD, went on for decades, before 1980 ( + ). Now all the misdiagnoses and the "cruel and unusual treatment" of the Vietnam vets of that time, is just being swept under the rug. Pretending that the VA's abuse of our most severely combat wounded, boots on the ground vets with PTSD, were treated like fakers and low-life troublemakers, during that era, cannot go on like it never happened. I stumbled onto this VA refusal to admit the misdiagnoses, when I asked to recode my PTSD, so I could draw an additional ten dollars a month CRSC retirement Army pay. The VA claims that I do not have PTSD, and that my unspecified anxiety disorder is not combat related. Ha,ha,ha,...lol... When I was 18 years old I entered a minefield to render aid to my fellow wounded brothers, I survived until the fourth explosion. Incoming fire was reported. And the VA now refuses to admit that they screwed up the rating code.. It wasn't even their fault. The whole country was ignorant about PTSD back then. Yet, today, still they will not admit they made a mistake. Unbelievable.

Edited October 27, 2009 by Commander Bob

[broncovet]

Vets Lady

I missed the "Medicare Madoff's" you were talking about. I bet if the new national health care plan goes through, you will be seeing a lot more

"Medicare Madoff Billionaires" who rip off taxpayers. This is what the new health care plan is about, it isnt about helping poor people get insurance.