Reforms focused on recent veterans

  • By Tom Philpott Herald Columnist
  • Friday, October 19, 2007 7:52pm
  • Business

President Bush’s plan to reform the disability compensation system, which he sent to Congress on Tuesday, includes a four-part payment scheme targeted exclusively at a newer generation of service members and veterans.

The plan is ambitious in scope and more generous than the existing system. It would be applied automatically only to future disabled veterans. And it would be offered as an alternative to disability benefits only for veterans separated or retired from service since Oct. 7, 2001, the day of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

Former Sen. Robert Dole, an architect of the plan as co-chairman of the President’s Commission on Care of America’s Returning Wounded Warriors, said he is getting “push back” from veterans service organizations. Lawmakers will feel it too, he said, but it shouldn’t deter them from giving disabled vets a better disability package.

“I think we passed the baton to this generation” as being “the greatest,” Dole told the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Oct. 17, a day after Bush unveiled his plan. “If they do a little better than we did, that’s OK. These are the grandsons and sons of Vietnam veterans and World War II veterans.” Improving their benefits, he said, “shows we’re making progress” and honoring their sacrifice.

As described by Donna Shalala, Dole’s co-chairwoman and a former cabinet member under President Clinton, the Bush plan would totally restructure how disability compensation levels are set. The military’s role would be reduced to conducting a thorough physical and, from that, determining if an ill or injured service member is unfit for duty. Those found unfit would be retired with a lifetime annuity based on final rank and time in service. Annuities would set at 2.5 percent of basic pay multiplied by years served.

The VA then would award a disability rating based on any service-related injury or ailment found. In addition to the military annuity, veterans would get a three-part VA payment: transition money to help adjust to civilian life; followed by a monthly payment for loss in earnings capacity, the same rationale for current disability pay; and a new quality-of-life payment to compensate for limits on day-to-day activities resulting from the disabilities.

Winning eligibility for lifetime health benefits brings “an additional requirement,” said a White House background document. The member’s “unfitness for military service” would have to be “due to a combat-related serious injury” or “would have to meet other criteria” set down in regulations by the secretary of defense. The “other criteria” might be, for example, that a service member be rated at least 30 percent disabled. That would match the current threshold for Tricare eligibility among disabled veterans.

To some veteran advocates, the White House motivation here is to block most veterans discharged as medically unfit from gaining access to Tricare benefits. White House officials prefer a different spin. They have said the intent is to expand Tricare eligibility to more combat-injured veterans.

At the Senate hearing, Shalala said the commission favored providing Tricare to disabled veterans and their families if the disabling conditions “were acquired in combat, supporting combat or preparing for combat.”

Congress will be the final arbiter of legislation to help wounded warriors or to revise disability compensation. Many veterans groups believe Congress this year will pass only those initiatives that bring immediate support to wounded warriors and their families, leaving until 2008 or beyond the challenge of overhauling disability pay and the VA ratings schedule.

Some of the “push back” Dole said he felt over his commission’s recommendations surfaced in the Senate hearing with lawmakers and veterans groups criticizing any plan where some portion of disability benefits are tied only to combat or combat-related injuries.

To comment, e-mail milupdate@aol.com, write Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA 20120-1111 or visit www.militaryupdate.com.

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