So… here we are in 2024. A whole year has gone by and some amazing occurrences have transpired. Or not, depending on your philosophies. Without trespassing into the forbidden subjects of religion or politics, I’ll try to illuminate where we stand this year. Veterans are pretty much still in the same boat they have been in since the War of 1812. Many promises made but few honored. 

Think back to the heady days of the VA Community Care Act of 2018. We were promised a glorious future free of traveling 160 miles at 41.5 ¢ for our medical care. We could simply ascertain it would take more than 30 days to get an appointment and then go to a local doctor, dentist or orthopedic surgeon in our community. Has anyone noticed that it might be easier to get an appointment sooner at the VAMC these days? My dentist informed me last year that he was no longer accepting VA’s financial guarantees after a two-year wait for a crown payment.

Remember President Trump passing and signing a law during his tenure giving him/them permission to fire a VA employee for egregious errors or blatant misfeasance? All we saw of that one was VA employees getting promoted up and out or allowing them to resign with their pensions, effective immediately.  You’d think it would operate like the military. You’d get recalled to active service, demoted or punished appropriately and then sent packing with your financial tail between your legs. It  was touted as the ‘see you later, alligator’ Act. It was about as effective as installing screen doors in submarines.

Over the last 35 years, I’ve   observed the slow progress we, as Veterans, have made in various areas. As was expected, the definition of what constituted a true, herbicide-exposed Viet Nam Veteran has expanded in fits and spurts. I actually still had Thailand Vets waiting in line at the BVA for the last five years who “statuted” into the PACT Act presumption while waiting for the decision. VA tried to only grant the August 2022 PACT  Act effective date rather than the Vet’s 2015 date of claim. If you complained in an HLR, they’d do a staged rating and give you a 0% from ’15 until 2022 and then kick it up.

Remember Cream’s lament “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all. ?” Somehow, it seems that way for us. The guys with the gill slits, who were almost 12 miles from any overspray, got the Procopio AO presumptive years before documented Thailand Vets (including a few of us “Togetherweneverserved” folks in countries to the North and East of Thailand) were granted the presumptive.

But, I think I should point out the disparity of being granted Nehmer Class status versus being granted PACT status. If you had filed for Parkinson’s under Nehmer as a boots-on-the- ground Vet in 2002 due to exposure and were denied, you could reopen in 2020 and win… plus get your effective date moved back to 2002 under §3.816(c). If you were newly inducted into the Thailand PACT Act for Parkie’s in 2022, and you had actually filed in 2002, you’re plumb shit out of luck under §3.816(c). Sometimes, being made a member of a new class of Vets doesn’t ensure you get benefits commensurate with your belated “Welcome Home!” parade.

Winner 2024 Horse Halloween

I don’t complain too awful much but VA seems to have a marked proclivity for begrudgingly relinquishing decades-old entitlements withheld but arbitrarily changing the rules to eliminate any possibility of retroactive benefits. Think back to the original §3.350(j) TBI benefit of SMC T. WWP pushed hard for this back in 2010… but only for post-911 Vets. It wasn’t until Congress in 2018 decided that clashed with the ‘E’ in DEI and granted the benefit to all Veterans… but still phased it in so as not to be too overly generous.

Concurrently, it seems VA, whether by their ignorance or by planned contrivance, has misconstrued virtually every last one of their SMC regulations to our financial detriment for decades. Witness the charade of  TDIU not technically being the same as a total 100% rating until 2008. Or the Buie decision saying who cares what order you got your SMCs? You get to assemble them in such a way that benefits you the most under §3.103(a). I could easily continue with Jensen, Breniser, Barry or Haskell/Laska. When will it end? Considering VA’s avowed nonadversarial stature, they sure are niggardly with their our benefits.

Veterans are the lifeblood of our Nation. Our citizens should cherish us as a National Treasure. Who else are they gonna call? Ghostbusters? Without us, our nation might be speaking English with a decidedly British lilt…or even German. We didn’t ask for much. I remember my monthly basic pay as an E-1 was $87.35 a month. Granted, that was 1969 but if you were to COLA that out to 2024, it would probably be about $550/month. Fat chance you’re going to attract many high quality, 4.0 grade-point average high school graduates for that kind of chump change. What the hey ? Mickey D hamburger stands pay higher than that.

The VA, and the military, by extension, offer little more than third world wages and medical benefits to Veterans that pale in comparison to the civilian sector. In this day and age we have Obamacare. Say what you will about its pros and cons but it’s at least available without a 30-day wait to get in. More importantly, you’re not forced to travel 234 miles one-way from Shafter, Texas to El Paso just to get your teeth cleaned and a cavity filled for free. Or meet with your VR&E counselor about your ILP claims because they demand an in-person meeting. In VA land, ‘free’ is a rather nebulous term- kinda like trying to define what the mean of ‘is’ is when discussing stains on blue dresses.

As many times as we Veterans have laid eyes on yellow ribbons and paper poppies annually, we continue to come away with little more than parades and Thank you for your service. Fast food restaurants offer free meals. VA hosts “Stand Downs” and hands out socks, toothbrushes and other sundries to homeless Vets yet VA says there’s no money to staff a 24-hour hotline for suicidal Vets. That speaks volumes to what they think of you.

We’ve pissed away billions on the Ukraine War and we don’t even have a dog in the fight. I shudder to think what might happen if someone decides we do. Been there. Done that. We can’t even honor the West LA campus promise of a home for indigent Vets guaranteed over a century ago. Instead, VA rents it out to Hertz rent-a-car, an oil drilling company, and a ballfield for a private school. They’ve fought the DOJ for years to keep homeless Vets out. That’s the VA who serves us Veterans. They spent thirteen years and probably over a million bucks denying me a greenhouse before they chieu hoi’d and granted it. They spent millions more denying my claim back to 1994 -only to concede error after twenty two years at the CAVC. And that’s just one Veteran. Try multiplying that by 3 million more Vets to get a feel for how far off the reservation these yayhoos are.

It is my undying hope that at this time next year when I write an article on this hallowed Armistice Day, that I will be singing the praises of a new, reborn VA, led by a conscientious Secretary who considers his job nothing less than a sacred duty to care for us. Sure, I can see there will be times when a Veteran will come forward and claim some benefit based on an alien abduction theory. To me, that’s what the Court of Appeals For Veterans Claims was invented for- not a running gun battle to deny at every turn.

I long for the day when they change VA’s motto to:

There are some things money can’t buy…

For everything else, there’s a VA Mastercard.

P.S. I’m sorry but  had to 86 a flamer who’s mentally unstable. Hopefully “Kay” aka Karen will now leave us in peace. She’s seems to be having  some form of derangement syndrome. We wish her well but she’s simply over the top. I hate to censor folks. She’s only the second one in the last 26 years. We earnestly hope she’ll get back on her medication regimen and get better.