Veterans Benefit Act Of 2010, Read Beyond The Headline

[broncovet]

The Veterans Benefit Act of 2010 was passed last week. Notice that there is no new money to pay for these things, they are reducing other Veterans benefits to pay for it, and the Va will actually save money. Of course, this will probably get lost in the fine print, just before election time. Read beyond the headline: Story here:

http://progress-inde...s-act-1.1045788

More important than what is IN this bill, is what is NOT in the bill.

Of course, there is nothing about our 25% Quality of Life increase. There is also nothing about a Cola, which will be zero, while the VA has raised the copayments for many Veterans. On one side of politicians mouth is "inflation went up and we are increasing your copays" and the other side says, "there is no inflation, so you dont get a raise".

If you are waiting for benefits, you are going to be waiting a long time, in a million man waiting list, that was also not addressed.

If your VA hospital was one of the majority of VA hospitals that failed inspection, often due to dirty equipment, this was not addressed either.

It is what the courts call a "deemed denial" of benefits, which works like this. The Veteran applies for benefits for 3 conditions. The RO sends a decision and awards (or denies) 2 of them. The other condition, which the VA has not addressed, has been automatically denied, or "deemed denied", and the Veteran is required to be savvy enough to figure this out, and appeal. If he does not appeal a deemed denial within a year, then the "deemed denial" becomes final and cant be appealed in the absence of a CUE.

Vawatchdog explains it here and the "new" Veterans benefit act does nothing to address this injustice to Vets.

http://www.vawatchdo...8-01-2006-1.htm

VNVets has a suggestion about what to do with "Vet Killers"...politicians who vote against Vets:

http://vnvets.blogsp...llers-list.html

Edited October 13, 2010 by broncovet

[jbasser]

The deemed denied part is a Joke but at least the Insurance is increasing to 30K.

The 18K auto allowance is nice.

J

Edited October 13, 2010 by jbasser

[john999]

The VA raising co-pays while denying a COLA is almost criminal. They commit fraud on a grand scale by billing private insurance for SC conditions. Try fixing that problem and you run into a brick wall of denial and BS from the VA. I have my congress critter working on it, but who knows. They only work on individual case and not the whole fradulent process. They hail recent vets as heros, but they too are getting screwed.

[Pete53]

Don't blame the VA for no COLA's

[Teac]

There are a lot of things not in this bill that I think we would all like to see. With that said, the items that are in the bill will help hundreds if not thousands of veterans.

I like the increase in life insurance ( wish it was more)

I like the increase in miortgage insurance, ( I have a $150k mortage, but before this went into efffect VA mortgage insurance was llimited to $90K.)

I like the increase in the auto grant ( even thouight I don't benefit because I used it in 1999)

Rome wasn't built in a day, and with this economy we should be grateful for any increase in benefits.

[stillhere]

I have a question on this bill about the insurance for the disabled veterans at 100% which I just joined. Does this bill mean that now 100% disability vets can buy 30,000 worth of insurance or the government is granting us 30K as no payments?? If so can we buy more?? This is confusing to me because the old way the VA gave us 10K free and we could buy another 10K to bring it up to 20. At least that is how I think it worked.

Anyone know??

[john999]

You have to pay for the extra 20,000 if you are on waiver for the first 10,000.