Are the visits from an injury received from time in combat?
Active duty personnel do not pay their emergency room bills, which are covered by Tricare.
Why should vets covered by VA have less coverage than active duty personnel?
I’ve worried about this. I live 45 miles from the nearest VA Medical center. There are emergency services much closer. At 72 things could happen to me that would need attention in a matter of minutes. This is important to me.
After going to the local hospital, by way of the emergency room, I decide I will pay the extra thousand bucks to have the ambulance drive me down to the VA.
Even if the VA will pay what my other insurance does not pay, I will go to the VA for the better care.
Called the VA when I had an emergency situation arise and told them I was heading on the 3hr trip to my VA Hospital, so be expecting me when I arrived. They told me do not attempt the trip, report to the XXX Hospital Emergency Room 30min away -— we are calling ahead for you and they will be waiting. Arrived at the closer hospital, received emergency care, and all is well.
BUT -—the VA never paid the bill, and they have a rule that says that if the Veteran pays even $1 toward the bill the VA is released from any responsibility and the Veteran must pay the whole bill.
Second time the VA has sent me somewhere else for treatment and then refused to pay the bill. First time kicked my credit rating in the shins for years.
you can read the whole article and be left with no info at all on the underlying legal issues in question
courts appropriating money should always raise an eyebrow
It’s a good deal for vets. Most vets don’t live near an adequate VA facility for emergencies.
Our VA hospital is about 40 minutes away. If my husband has an emergency, he goes to the local hospital. He has never had any problems having the VA cover them. He is a retired disabled vet and this is one of his benefits. Used to be, they would transfer him to the VA if he would have to stay more than one night but, not any more.
Again I say that I have no complaints about the VA. ER visits or otherwise.
Maybe someday a court will rule that the VA must provide medically appropriate and effective treatment for pain.
Doubt it, though.
This is a very bad ruling and should be over turned. The VA was not established to cover non-service related medical conditions.
The VA was created to treat Service related issues of non career military vets. Period.
My dad was a combat wounded vet. He received two purple hearts for combat war wounds. The second nearly took his life.
As he grew older he suffered numerous medical issues. He went to the emergency room and what his insurance did not cover he paid for.
This precedent, if upheld, will bankrupt the VA. I am not a fan of the VA by any stretch but, this ruling is absurd.
What I want to learn is what does the law say, what does the law require the VA to do; what has been the Congressional intent - and acknowledged budgeting - based on the law.
What I want to be clear about is that we should only be demanding what the law requires of the VA, not what some court has decided all on its own what IT thinks the VA ought to do.
Is this really something new that has started to happen - the non-reimbursements - or is this a new challenge to essentially long standing - and long understood - VA practice. And, which way does the law say the VA is required to act.
Why all of that? The VA can only be wrong if they made regulations and/or operational decisions contrary to the laws that dictate what their regulations can and cannot do. The law would be an expression of Congressional intent as to whether the taxpayers (VA budget) must pay for emergency care given by private emergency care services, and if so then to what extent.
Is the judge following the law, or out of sympathy to the plaintiffs trying to make law from the bench.