Giving credit where credit is due, member Shawn sends us this morsel. It’s a sore point with me and others where our Veterans assets are disbursed. This really hit home for me in 2010 when my wife’s father passed away. The estate planner showed up and started telling us to move what assets Grandma had left into a trust or transfer them to us so she’d qualify for a VA widower’s pension and quite possibly A&A now that she’s in a nursing home. Grandma doesn’t need it. She and Grandpa did quite well for themselves while they were in their earning years. The SSI was chump change that paid for the gas and groceries.

This is forbidden where Medicaid is concerned and rightfully so. More and more people with obvious financial assets are moving them adroitly into shell trusts or other’s bank accounts in order to qualify for funds that rightfully should be disbursed by SSA. To add insult to injury, the vA makes no effort to determine if you’re scamming the system.  We only see that level of investigation when someone like Keith Roberts pulls their string one time too many and aggravates the vAOIG. The true measure of  vA’s wrath descends then- whether deserved or not.

Surely there are those of us out there who were profligate or worked under the table for wages only to discover they shortchanged their Social Security check to their own detriment later when they needed the income. I know of one who gets about $862, maybe $900 tops because he did this. He’s broke and sick and didn’t foresee HCV. A viable recourse would be to apply to the vA for that pension at the 100% rate of $2769/mo. after he turns 65. I would. What I wouldn’t do is transfer my millions or however much I’d amassed over the years into secret accounts in order to take advantage of that paltry sum. Especially when it robs the food out other Vets’ mouths (figuratively speaking). Sadly the “I,me,me, mine” generation as envisaged by the Beatles song and practiced by the Congressional vultures has come home to roost.

Rarely do I advocate against Veterans except for those who clog up the judicial system with meritless claims. This is one time I agree that the system is  broken  and in need of transformation. With government on the verge of breaking under the financial strain, it seems criminal for the rich to game the system and even more egregious for the feather merchants who aid them in this scheme to benefit as well. Pitch a bitch. It’s your money they’re absconding with.

Here’s the article and thank you to Shawn for bringing it to our attention. This is your site. Use it when you see a problem because these things metastasize when they are ignored. Look no further than those crazy programs where farmers were paid NOT to grow things. Next thing we see is millionaire movie star “farmers” investing in farms they don’t operate and have no plans of growing foodstuffs on. Hell, they often don’t even have harvesters or tractors with which to NOT grow the crops they’re getting paid NOT to plant. America has a flat tire. This November would be a good time to fix it.

It’s Joe Veteran’s Administration

but the  Benefits Department ain’t his.