Recently I’ve talked with two veterans, both honorably discharged and both disabled in the line of duty, who have less than desirable living conditions.
One, while he has a home, lives on the edge of poverty, with little more than a couple hundred dollars keeping him off the street. He lives in low income housing and has confided in me that his landlord treats him like a criminal.
The other isn’t so lucky. Though he’s staying with friends, he’s spent several nights “wherever he could lay his head.”
Though I don’t know either very well, I do know they deserve better. Anyone who has served our country deserves better.
I don’t care if you’re the most worthless person to walk the face of the earth, if you’ve served our country for the requisite amount of time and been rendered disabled in any form because of that service, worrying about where you’re going to sleep should be far from your cares. And you should never fear poverty.
But that is not the case in our wonderful country. Don’t mistake me, I’m not being sarcastic. We do live in a wonderful country, but it is wonderful precisely because of the sacrifice of veterans, living, dead and disabled.
Why then, do we treat our veterans as second-class citizens?
They should not have wait to months for their pensions or benefits to kick in, especially those who, because of their service to our country, are unable to work.
Have you ever been to the Veterans Administration website? I visited it just recently trying to collect information about benefits. I’m not an unintelligent person, but I had a difficult time deciphering what a veteran should do in order to get benefits started. It took me a solid 45 minutes to find out what the benefits were.
When I tried to talk to a person, I was put on hold and then referred to one of those endless phone menus, with no choice ever being quite what I needed.
And what about the veteran who lives on the street or can’t afford a phone, a computer or the Internet or a car to get someplace where a computer or Internet is available?
On one page of the VA website, I was told that most disability claims take six months or longer to process.
Come on now. Six months.
Think about it. If you have a disability that prevents you from working, six months can be the difference between having a home and being homeless.
But here’s the icing on the cake: veterans receive a certain amount of money for each disability, depending upon the severity of it, as determined by the VA, of course.
For instance, lose a foot or a hand, and you get 10 percent, or $117 a month for a veteran with no dependents. Want more? Then try breaking your back or being paralyzed, losing an eye or going deaf. You get a little more for each of those disabilities.
“VA evaluates each service-related condition in 10 percent increments,” according to the website. “For some conditions, the maximum level of compensation is 100 percent. However, for most conditions, the maximum level of compensation is less than 100 percent. Once the medical evidence is evaluated and a percentage rating assigned, VA pays the amount of compensation provided by law for that rating.”
The most a veteran with no dependents can expect to receive on 100 percent disability is $2,527.
The absolute highest a veteran can receive is $3,000 a month, and that veteran must also be responsible for a spouse, a child and two parents. And get this, a veteran receiving about $3,000 a month is over-qualified for low-income housing but can hardly afford to live anywhere else.
Excuse me, but no amount of money can replace the use of one of my limbs. I can’t imagine living without a body part, but apparently the people who wrote this law thought it was no big deal.
This isn’t a new problem. I can remember hearing complaints about the time involved in making a VA claim, the quality of VA hospitals and the overall treatment of veterans by our government from the time I was a small child and accompanying my grandfather, a World War II veteran, on his doctor’s visits.
It’s high time we do something about it.
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Recently I’ve talked with two veterans, both honorably discharged and both disabled in the line of duty, who have less than desirable living conditions.
One, while he has a home, lives on the edge of poverty, with little more than a couple hundred dollars keeping him off the street. He lives in low income housing and has confided in me that his landlord treats him like a criminal.
The other isn’t so lucky. Though he’s staying with friends, he’s spent several nights “wherever he could lay his head.”
Though I don’t know either very well, I do know they deserve better. Anyone who has served our country deserves better.
I don’t care if you’re the most worthless person to walk the face of the earth, if you’ve served our country for the requisite amount of time and been rendered disabled in any form because of that service, worrying about where you’re going to sleep should be far from your cares. And you should never fear poverty.
But that is not the case in our wonderful country. Don’t mistake me, I’m not being sarcastic. We do live in a wonderful country, but it is wonderful precisely because of the sacrifice of veterans, living, dead and disabled.
Why then, do we treat our veterans as second-class citizens?
They should not have wait to months for their pensions or benefits to kick in, especially those who, because of their service to our country, are unable to work.
Have you ever been to the Veterans Administration website? I visited it just recently trying to collect information about benefits. I’m not an unintelligent person, but I had a difficult time deciphering what a veteran should do in order to get benefits started. It took me a solid 45 minutes to find out what the benefits were.
When I tried to talk to a person, I was put on hold and then referred to one of those endless phone menus, with no choice ever being quite what I needed.
And what about the veteran who lives on the street or can’t afford a phone, a computer or the Internet or a car to get someplace where a computer or Internet is available?
On one page of the VA website, I was told that most disability claims take six months or longer to process.
Come on now. Six months.
Think about it. If you have a disability that prevents you from working, six months can be the difference between having a home and being homeless.
But here’s the icing on the cake: veterans receive a certain amount of money for each disability, depending upon the severity of it, as determined by the VA, of course.
For instance, lose a foot or a hand, and you get 10 percent, or $117 a month for a veteran with no dependents. Want more? Then try breaking your back or being paralyzed, losing an eye or going deaf. You get a little more for each of those disabilities.
“VA evaluates each service-related condition in 10 percent increments,” according to the website. “For some conditions, the maximum level of compensation is 100 percent. However, for most conditions, the maximum level of compensation is less than 100 percent. Once the medical evidence is evaluated and a percentage rating assigned, VA pays the amount of compensation provided by law for that rating.”
The most a veteran with no dependents can expect to receive on 100 percent disability is $2,527.
The absolute highest a veteran can receive is $3,000 a month, and that veteran must also be responsible for a spouse, a child and two parents. And get this, a veteran receiving about $3,000 a month is over-qualified for low-income housing but can hardly afford to live anywhere else.
Excuse me, but no amount of money can replace the use of one of my limbs. I can’t imagine living without a body part, but apparently the people who wrote this law thought it was no big deal.
This isn’t a new problem. I can remember hearing complaints about the time involved in making a VA claim, the quality of VA hospitals and the overall treatment of veterans by our government from the time I was a small child and accompanying my grandfather, a World War II veteran, on his doctor’s visits.
It’s high time we do something about it.
