My father in his 90s gets lower cost heart medication through the VA system. He has to reapply annually. Being on medicare doesn’t mean you can’t use other health insurance or other govt health benefits.
About ten years ago I learned a friend was a patient in the VA hospital. I went to visit her and told her I had not known she was a veteran She told me she was not, but that her husband was 100% service connected disabled and that made her eligible for care there.
I don’t know if that is still true or not.
My husband had private insurance and medicare but preferred the care at the VA. It actually cost him more to see the VA doctors than private, but he got good care and he liked going there. That was the Charlie Norwood VAMC Downtown Division in Augusta, GA.
Service connected injury. I was ordered to follow up with the VA. I showed up, the surgeon told me they were going to schedule me for surgery. I left and never went back.
It’s nice to know I’m in the system and have back up coverage but I hope to never step foot in one again.
I had an uncle who lost a leg in ‘45. He had to go to the VA to get new legs and have them check his stump.
It was a pain in the stump.
He was well off enough to have private insurance. I have no idea why he kept going back. I guess he figured he deserved free care. (Not arguing that point—but at the time specialists could have helped him more.)
The ones I knew .. and know .. all had/have jobs and provided for their later years themselves
An online friend of mine went to the VA for a pacemaker. He didn’t have to wait very long before one was installed.
Then, news surfaced that that particular kind/brand of pacemaker was defective and had killed many people. He’s OK, but how long will he be? He tells me that removing it would tear his heart muscles and kill him, so he’s stuck with the thing.
The VA web site might be a good place to
start finding out what you qualify for.
Quite a bit of info there.
Good luck.
Any service related injury should be enough to get VA benefits. I was told to go to the VA and have my hearing checked and see if I was qualified for benefits, but have better hearing than many 20 yr olds.
I can still see bullet hole stikes at 25 meters, so no use to try for benefits. I have TRICARE Prime from my military service and it is working fine for us.
My brother-in-law got an honorable discharge from the Army but in big letters at the top of his DD-214 is said, “Not eligible for reenlistment”.
He got VA benefits and is now buried in the VA cemetery. The burial was paid for by the VA.
It took me a about six or seven months to first see a doctor {I'm on low priority and rightfully so} and almost a year to get to the Audiology Clinic. Good part is if the hearing aids need repair I can go in and see a tech anytime. To be checked or have them adjusted requires an appointment usually.
Well my father got them and he wanted and needed them as a Disabled American Veteran.
His medical condition was related to his combat service in WWII. He needed medical assistance from the age or 25. He used a VA hospital in our State about 50 miles from home. The treated him very well.
Corpsman during Vietnam, MD (shrink) now: Never signed up nor took part in any VA health care after the dismal view I got of it during medical school and residency, and I never would after I saw what they did to my brother, and after I started picking up the pieces of the “care” they gave to patients who later came to me, and after trying to interact meaningfully on behalf of my patients who were still involved in getting meds and labs and care in other specialties there.
I’ve essentially told vets who come to me that they can either have my care - as a civilian - or the VA care, because I cannot coordinate care with them.
I’ve written letters to all concerned in and out of government that vouchers were the only sensible idea. They don’t make the vets go to VA universities, nor live in VA housing - they give them, essentially, a voucher.
Government bureaucracies never concern themselves, ultimately, with the mission they were designed for - they concern themselves with preservation of funding and perks and such. No federal bureaucracy is any different, and few are substantially better. They are incapable of doing better, and the calls for more funding, changes in leadership, and new laws for “accountability” are just more of the BS we’ve come to expect (and pay for!) from Big Gov. Not gonna change. Not capable of change.
Problem, though, with the voucher solution is that ObamaCare will turn the entire system into a Federal bureaucracy in a few years, probably worse than the VA, and then the vouchers will also be meaningless: especially since most of the good docs are planning to head for the hills as the monstrosity really takes effect in the next few years.
V A ping.
Any Veteran can use the VA system, and it has been a help to many vets without resources.
Is it possible to run the medical side of the VA more efficiently by tapping into civilian care via some kind of voucher? That strikes me as a workable idea.
Is there a benefit in providing an extension of the military medical system beyond one’s time in the military? I imagine there are injuries and diseases common (or unique) to military service that such a system could focus on and be expert in that one wouldn’t so readily find in the average civilian medical system.
So, I can see a role for an extended military medical system. Bureaucracy, though, is more than willing to lose sight of its mission in order to preserve the bureaucracy at all costs, and even to extend it and bloat it.
How do you prevent bureaucracy in a governmental program? No one has ever solved that one to my knowledge.
I am eligible but since I now have medicare I never applied. Vets here (Galveston County) think the VA is great. I should probably at least get a VA card. Just in case. lol.
“Who Gets VA Health Benefits?”
Evidently those who are willing to wait and then survive that wait...
I retired from the Army after 20 years of service and am not eligible for VA benefits...thank God.