Congratulations all you clash for clunkers recipients. You may very well be driving your lovely new car at the expense of veterans all across America. I find it ironic that just after President Obama entered office and started doling out money to the big banks, wall street and car companies that low-income veterans entitled to travel pay so they can get to and from their medical appointments at a V.A hospital are getting the shaft.
Here’s what’s happening. Veterans were usually recompensed in cash for travel immediately after having had their medical appointments. Very early in the year this still occurred then as Obama gave money to the rich, those who needed it most were denied any cash compensation. First the V.A. lowered the amount it would pay out in cash. If a veteran’s travel pay (based upon distance traveled) was $55, for example, and the new arbitrary threshold was $50, the V.A. told the vet it would send him a check. The turnaround time was cited as two-weeks which meant that a veteran would have to wait two weeks before he got the money he needed to get to the V.A. and back home the two weeks prior.
Soon the two-week wait became three and now it’s up to five or six. Simultaneously, the cash compensation threshold was lowered to $10 so anyone entitled to $11 in travel pay would have to wait up to six weeks! Remember the people allowed to get the travel pay are those who have proved to be low-income. So then the question comes, how is the veteran supposed to get to his appointments and back home if he can’t afford it? And, of course, the answer is, he can’t. So not only is the veteran being shafted when it comes to travel pay compensation, he’s being shafted on his medical care as well.
The bottom line here is that someone always has to pay. In this case it’s the veterans (again). What a disgrace. When people say our system needs fixing they aren’t kidding. It’s just too bad that the brain trust of America is so corrupted by corporate greed on absolutely every level that no one person or group of people can ever hope to dig out of the muck. Our legislators are an abomination for allowing this to happen again and again and again …
Update: Dec. 24, 2009: My veteran friend tells me that just this week he learned that travel pay cash reimbursement went up to $100. That’s terrific. Hopefully it will last longer than just Christmas week.
Travel pay is a terrible progam, coming from a Oif Veteran who qualifies for it as a patient and as a employee of the VA. It is a abused program, where patients often give false addresses, and purposely try to set up needless apptments like BP checks and such just to get it several times a week. The VA spends billions a year on this program for Veterans who ALREADY get 100% free health care. We could spend this money on more providers so we can get patients in earlier, or operating longer hours to accomidate the younger veterans who work 9-5′s.
You make a valid point. However many vets don’t cheat and they desperately need the travel pay. V.A. hospitals are few and far between. The person I accompanied had to travel 2 hours one way. And he lived on $400 a month. There would have been no way he could afford to travel to the hospital and afford food and shelter, which he barely was able to do as it was, without having that necessary travel pay. They should either build the hospitals in every city otherwise we should have universal health care which is sorely needed in this country. When people are desperate they just might commit fraud. We need good solutions not threats of fewer services.
I am a Veteran who is eligible for travel pay. I have also worked in the travel pay section. Veterans are still getting their money and do not have to wait. The only exceptions to having to wait is if the travel office is, for some reason, closed (clerk out sick, etc.) or the Veteran ***chooses*** to request travel pay mailed to him/her. Otherwise, you just walk up to the window and fill out a form and have your money (almost instantly.)
I am happy to hear that travel pay to veterans may have been improved since I wrote my article. I can assure you that at the time the article was written, veterans were NOT receiving their travel pay in a timely fashion which caused many great hardship.
I am also a veteran, and was sent to a fee basis Doctor. I went to my VA facility to get travel pay, and was told I would have to send it in and wait.
This was 3 weeks ago, and I have not been paid, and I have to go to the Doctor again….this isn’t cheap. It is a 4 hour drive – one way.
Perhaps, one day, the people making the laws will have to experience the repercussions of their actions first hand. Only then will they come to understand the hardships that common folk are forced to go through. Too bad the V.A. just can’t be consistent in making things easy for their veterans.
I just had a c&p exam and I got 38 dollars in travel pay. My last c&p exam in 06 netted me only 17 dollars. Who was president then?
I think you really missed the gist of the article which was that Obama has given away tons of money to companies resulting in the pain and suffering to veterans who have to wait ridiculous amounts of time to be reimbursed, thus forcing them to miss needed appointments! Add to that the fact that the V.A. keeps changing its travel pay reimbursement requirements. I know this for a fact because I accompany a friend there every single week. He had to wait 2 months to be reimbursed this last time. It’s absurd.