Aid and Attendance Blog

After more than 5 years helping Veterans and their families learn about the Aid and Attendance benefit, we are tired of people bashing the Veterans Administration. No they are not perfect, yes people’s benefits get delayed, lost, or wrongly denied, but what about the hundreds of thousands of veterans approved for benefits each year who are able to live and pay their bills because of the VA, I bet those people are grateful.

Here are some things to think about the next time you read that the VA is bad and doesn’t want to award benefits:

The VA has a $145,100,000,000 budget (that is 145 billion, just to be clear), of which $86,000,000,000 is paid directly to veterans and their dependants. Another $44,500,000,000 is used to treat the 7,840,000 Americans who receive their healthcare from the VA. This programs and benefits offered by the VA support the 23,400,000 living veterans and the families of those who pass away, which includes 900 WWII veterans that die each day. Currently, there are 317,704 (as of 3/31/09) Pension recipients, which is the program that the Aid and Attendance benefit falls under. They each receive an average of $8,509 per year tax free.

So why do so many people feel the VA is out to deny veterans what they have coming to them? In our opinion it is bureaucracy and the number of programs available to veterans. When a private company wants to implement a new program they write up a proposal, present it to the decision makers and then the plan is approved or denied. Unfortunately, when something at the VA needs to be changed they have to get it approved by Congress. They are dealing with antiquated technology, which is not anyone’s fault, it is just the reality of a system that supports more than 20% of the US population, yes, 20% of the US population is a veteran, and that does not take into consideration the living dependants of deceased veterans who are provided for by the VA. The other significant problem the VA has is the sheer number of programs they administer. One easy fix the VA could implement is to have a better system to direct callers to experts in each area. Far too many people are helped by generalists who unfortunately just don’t know the answers. The reality is no one can be an expert on Compensation, Pension, Burial Benefits, Education Loans, Home Loans, Health Benefits, Dependant Benefits, etc, it is just too much.

So the next time you hear that the VA is lousy, come to their defense and remind the offending party that the employees at the VA want to award benefits and they want to help people. I can assure you that the 3,700,000 families who receive a check each month from the VA would attest that the VA has been there for them, some had to fight to get what they had coming, but that is our government, not the VA.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Articles about Benefits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.