thedrifter
06-25-07, 07:49 AM
Retroactive payout for non-combat injured?
By Rick Maze - rmaze@militarytimes.com
Posted : July 02, 2007
A House subcommittee is being asked to allow retroactive insurance payments to service members who suffered life-altering traumatic injuries outside a combat zone.
Congress faced a similar issue last year in a debate concerning military death benefits and ended up making retroactive payments to survivors of active-duty troops whose deaths did not occur in a combat zone. Now, lawmakers are considering House and Senate bills that would provide retroactive traumatic injury insurance payments of up to $100,000 for injuries occurring outside a combat zone from Oct. 7, 2001 to Dec. 1, 2005.
During that time, the Veterans Affairs Department estimates 695 service members suffered serious and permanent injuries that would have qualified them for traumatic injury payments if they had occurred in the Iraq or Afghanistan combat zones. But troops outside the war zones were not covered by the insurance program until Dec. 1, 2005.
Retroactive payments, at an estimated $67,000 per person, would cost about $47.7 million, Jack McCoy, VA’s associate deputy undersecretary for policy and program management, said at a June 19 hearing before the House Veterans’ Affairs disability assistance and memorial affairs subcommittee.
The cost would be borne by the Defense Department, not the VA, because retroactive insurance payments are considered a military expense.
While there is bipartisan support for the bill, the veterans’ affairs committee does not have the authority to direct Pentagon spending, leaving doubts about the fate of the House bill.
But congressional aides said the bill can’t be counted out, because its sponsors are key lawmakers.
The House version is sponsored by Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., who chairs the House Veterans’ Affairs economic opportunity subcommittee. The Senate bill is co-sponsored by Sens. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman, and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, former veterans’ committee chairman and now its senior Republican.
“It is inequitable to deny retroactive payments to those who have suffered the same grievous injures based solely on the location where the traumatic event took place,” said Meredith Beck, national policy director for the Wounded Warrior Project, the group that convinced Congress to pass traumatic injury insurance in the first place.
Removing the combat-zone distinction also will ease the burden for troops who may not know where their injury happened, as in the case of traumatic brain injury, for example, said Todd Bowers, government affairs director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
“Many traumatic injuries involve closed head wounds that are often difficult to connect to one particular event among many,” Bowers said. “Often, there is little or no physical trace of mild to moderate TBI, and the symptoms, such as difficulties with memory or emotional problems, are only recognized months or years later.”
Sharon Hodge, associate government affairs director of Vietnam Veterans of America, said Congress must recognize “that even training for war is a dangerous business in itself.”
“An Air Force pilot was killed last week in simulated close-air combat over Alaska,” Hodge said. “Every time a unit goes to Twentynine Palms [Calif.] to train in desert warfare, someone is seriously inured. Training for war is sometimes almost as dangerous as war itself.”
Ellie
By Rick Maze - rmaze@militarytimes.com
Posted : July 02, 2007
A House subcommittee is being asked to allow retroactive insurance payments to service members who suffered life-altering traumatic injuries outside a combat zone.
Congress faced a similar issue last year in a debate concerning military death benefits and ended up making retroactive payments to survivors of active-duty troops whose deaths did not occur in a combat zone. Now, lawmakers are considering House and Senate bills that would provide retroactive traumatic injury insurance payments of up to $100,000 for injuries occurring outside a combat zone from Oct. 7, 2001 to Dec. 1, 2005.
During that time, the Veterans Affairs Department estimates 695 service members suffered serious and permanent injuries that would have qualified them for traumatic injury payments if they had occurred in the Iraq or Afghanistan combat zones. But troops outside the war zones were not covered by the insurance program until Dec. 1, 2005.
Retroactive payments, at an estimated $67,000 per person, would cost about $47.7 million, Jack McCoy, VA’s associate deputy undersecretary for policy and program management, said at a June 19 hearing before the House Veterans’ Affairs disability assistance and memorial affairs subcommittee.
The cost would be borne by the Defense Department, not the VA, because retroactive insurance payments are considered a military expense.
While there is bipartisan support for the bill, the veterans’ affairs committee does not have the authority to direct Pentagon spending, leaving doubts about the fate of the House bill.
But congressional aides said the bill can’t be counted out, because its sponsors are key lawmakers.
The House version is sponsored by Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., who chairs the House Veterans’ Affairs economic opportunity subcommittee. The Senate bill is co-sponsored by Sens. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman, and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, former veterans’ committee chairman and now its senior Republican.
“It is inequitable to deny retroactive payments to those who have suffered the same grievous injures based solely on the location where the traumatic event took place,” said Meredith Beck, national policy director for the Wounded Warrior Project, the group that convinced Congress to pass traumatic injury insurance in the first place.
Removing the combat-zone distinction also will ease the burden for troops who may not know where their injury happened, as in the case of traumatic brain injury, for example, said Todd Bowers, government affairs director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
“Many traumatic injuries involve closed head wounds that are often difficult to connect to one particular event among many,” Bowers said. “Often, there is little or no physical trace of mild to moderate TBI, and the symptoms, such as difficulties with memory or emotional problems, are only recognized months or years later.”
Sharon Hodge, associate government affairs director of Vietnam Veterans of America, said Congress must recognize “that even training for war is a dangerous business in itself.”
“An Air Force pilot was killed last week in simulated close-air combat over Alaska,” Hodge said. “Every time a unit goes to Twentynine Palms [Calif.] to train in desert warfare, someone is seriously inured. Training for war is sometimes almost as dangerous as war itself.”
Ellie