VA Priority 7/8 Enrollment Adjusted

While there's still no new news that I've seen on Recovery Act checks for veterans beyond the latest June 30th deadline, another interesting VA item popped up into the news recently. From VA Watchdog.org:

In January of 2003, to save money, then VA Secretary Anthony J. Principi ordered his agency to stop enrolling Priority Group 8 veterans. These are veterans with no service-connected disabilities and whose income / assets is above certain geographic thresholds. Official VA definition is:

Group 8: Veterans with income and/or net worth above the VA national income threshold and the geographic income threshold who agree to pay copays.

Today ( June 15, 2009 ) the rules change.

The income threshold will go up by 10% thus allowing over 250,000 more veterans into the VA health care system. A full explantion is on this VA page.

An example: If your threshold was $28,000, add $2,800 ( 10% ) and the new threshold is $30,800.

NOTE: If you are a Group 8 veteran who has been turned down, don't assume anything. Find out for sure if you qualify. The VA has an enrollment calculator you can use to find out for sure. Go to this VA page, enter all your info, and see if you now qualify.

If I'm running the numbers right through the VA calculator linked above, then this means veterans in our area making roughly less than $35,000 per year or so (not accounting for deductions or other income that may apply) can enroll in the VA system for fairly reasonable co-pays. I'm not sure what the threshold was previously but some quick math based on the increase and new cutoff puts it below $32,000 per year.

More handy information on this was in the above link from the Star-Telegram article on the subject:

The details

Beginning Monday, the VA will increase its income threshold by 10 percent, opening up VA care to an estimated 266,000 more veterans nationwide.

"This gives the veterans a little bit more flexibility in the amount of income they can have," said Chris Sandles, assistant chief of medical administrative services with the VA’s North Texas system.

For example, in the Fort Worth area, including Johnson and Parker counties, an unmarried veteran can now earn up to $39,820 a year and get medical care from the VA.

In Dallas and Denton counties, that same unmarried veteran can now earn up to $40,975 a year. In Hood County, the amount is $38,610. The income threshold goes up as the number of dependents rises.

Veterans who applied for treatment this year and were denied will be automatically enrolled, if they qualify. Veterans denied in past years will have to reapply with more recent income proof.VA officials can only estimate the number of veterans who will now qualify and will seek service this year, but the number they arrived at was 2,200, or about 2 percent growth.

The power to cut off Priority 8 veterans (those veterans without any service-connected disabilities with higher income) has always been a bit controversial since the VA health care system first expanded enrollment to pretty much all veterans back in the 90s. It became a burning topic when that power was employed in 2003 during war-time, as the Clinton era legislation was intended to ensure health care access for lower income vets and those with service connected injuries/ailments. In 2003 the issue went beyond just returning service members from current wars but also the same issue affecting health care programs in general these days: the wave of elderly with rapidly increasing health care needs booming into the rolls.

You'll have some folks argue that veterans have earned access to VA care regardless of income, and others who argue that during a resource crunch like we're facing today we should not jeopardize access for those who truly need it, depend on it, etc by making promises we can't keep so we can include those who can realistically afford their own private health care. One side sees it as a inherent obligation to all vets... the other envisions longer wait times for veterans missing limbs or financially desperate so that some accountant who served a short stint as a desk clerk back in the day can save some money on health insurance.

After the massive spending spree of both Bush and Obama to save the economy from the recession that made the VA budget look like chump change in comparison, many would probably now argue that if we can spend like there are no repercussions for long term gain, why not for veterans? Fully fund it already!

With Obama's promises of finally establishing universal access to health care and his continuance and expansion of the Bush spending sprees, this 10% move seems pretty meager and certainly hard to explain. He's essentially continuing the policy under Bush's VA to block enrollment of some vets that was criticized endlessly over the years, but with a slightly higher cutoff. If the policy was bad and unnecessary why continue it at all? In the context of pushing for universal health care it seems to make even less sense.

Veterans have been thrown a bone. Are they now being expected to roll over?