The Military Veteran: No Revenue = No Sacrifice

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Now a decade plus added to the decades previous since Korea and especially us Vietnam Veterans, by ignoring what we were saying, PTS, TBI’s, Agent Orange, Suicides, more, to the first Gulf War Veterans, Gulf War Syndrome, more, and now into these two theater Veterans already, many issues from suicides to burn pits to once again homelessness and unemployment, more!

The 112th House has already tried cutting the VA budget and will continue same, DeJa-Vu all over again!

The Country is the Government, easier to lay blame at the agencies then to look in the mirror, from congress through the population, especially the false flag waving corporate financed self described only patriots!

07/31/11 – Aundray Rogers, an Army veteran and single father of three, worries that he and his children will be living on the street come September.

Rogers, one of several hundred thousand U.S. veterans using the Post-9/11 GI Bill to help pay for his education, will need to make some difficult decisions Monday, when changes to the law take effect.

“I personally think that I am going to be homeless,” Rogers said. “I will take any job to supplement the bills. We are the guinea pigs of this GI Bill.”

Rogers is upset about two changes to the Post-9/11 GI Bill, under which about 90 to 95 percent of the nation’s student veterans receive funding, according to benefits official Mario Mihelcic of the College of San Mateo. The changes were signed into law Jan. 4 as part of the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2010.

One change will eliminate break pay, which now provides benefits during holidays and portions of the month that students are not enrolled. The second will require veterans to take at least 12 academic units to receive 100 percent of their benefits. Up to now, veterans have received full benefits for taking at least seven units, noted Dustin Noll of the Peninsula Veterans’ Center.

“They got me; they played me,” Rogers said. “I went into the Army to get the funds for college, and now it isn’t there.”

Future funding under the GI Bill will depend upon how many units students take. Although veterans will still remain eligible for the same amount of total educational reimbursement, the pace of that cash flow could be significantly longer than the 36 months currently funded, Mihelcic said.

Jack Jacoby, president of the City College of San Francisco Veterans’ Alliance, said that will hurt many veterans.

“When payments are choppy, rent stays the same,” Jacoby said. “This is going to affect a lot of veterans that will go homeless or be evicted. This is a combined arms mission against veterans’ livelihood.” read more>>>

July 31, 2011 – State officials are exploring ways to encourage veterans on Medicaid to shift some or all of their health care to the federal Department of Veterans Affairs, saving the state money and potentially improving benefits for veterans.

“Clearly we should have been exploring this before, but we are looking at it now,” said Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew. “People who are on Medicaid who have military service are eligible for Medicaid, but clearly there are opportunities for individuals to move into the veterans health benefits programs and there are clearly savings for the Medicaid program.”

Maine has approximately 150,000 veterans, one of the highest per capita in the nation. Peter Ogden, director of the state Bureau of Veterans Services, said only about 40,000 of them are taking advantage of the various Veterans Affairs health programs.

“We have some data-sharing problems under federal law,” he said. “But I think there are ways that we can make this work.”

Several states are using the federal database of the Public Assistance Reporting Information System set up to help stop fraud in Medicaid. The database has information identifying recipients who are also veterans and that has been used to provide information to those veterans about VA programs.

“In Washington state, where it has been used the longest, it has been successful because they have someone on the DHS staff that works with veterans to provide them the information about VA benefits,” Ogden said. “We have been trying to figure out how we could fund a position to do that here.” read more>>>

Nice try, Veterans pay into Medicaid their whole civilian working lives, and would be a good idea, for some care needs, if it wasn’t for the fact of the obstruction for years as to the VA Federal Budget. Just one reason the time it takes for care especially adding these two long occupation veterans to those of us who’ve served previously has been backlogged, IT that hasn’t kept pace even with what a consumer can buy off the shelf, that is gradually being upgraded thanks to the recovery funds along with other long time needs.

The 112th House has already sought to cut the VA budget and will continue with every cut they manage to somehow get through. Without revenue, i.e. over a decade of No Sacrifice by the Country added to the already previous decades since Korea of shortchanging the VA while growing the Defense bloated budget, which has nothing to do with the VA and as we’ve seen in the years following the start of these two current conflicts wasn’t going to issues of the enlisted, housing etc. at Walter Reed, on bases the same and more especially as related to the enlisted and their families.

That to is changing as Reed closes, reason giving even knowing Reed would be a first stop for many soldiers returning from these two conflicts that it was closing so no need to upgrade what existed and shouldn’t have, and the recovery funds went to many base problems along with some monies as to base closings and combining forces.  

There’s plenty more, but it adds up to a Country that funds it’s Defense with no questions and not getting it’s monies worth, while those execs were reaping as were the investors especially under the rubber stamped no bid contracts while Not Fully Funding The VA which costs much more in continuing to need to catch up, easier to blame the agency, from congress through the population, then to fund it on the front end and raise that funding as to our wars of choice, which saves monies as it operates more efficiently and only with the gradual needed advances!