My father also avoided using VA — until it became unaffordable for him to stay private, and as stated it’s a PITA regardless of your status. Another thing to bear in mind is when going through VA there’s the mentioned factor of percentages and the difference between your condition being “service connected” vs. “non service connected” which affects eligibilities.
I don’t often say this. Your retired JAG colonel has no idea what he’s talking about. My wife’s uncle is a retired 2 star JAG. I wouldn’t even ask him the question because the Army, JAG and even the Secretary of Defense has nothing to do with the VA. Your friend’s perspective is strictly from a National Guard point of view. It is not how things work with active duty.
As I noted far above there is a big difference between active and reserve component. I’ve been both. In the Guard and Reserves it is extremely important to get all the Line of Duty reports to make your case that you are injured on duty. I was in leadership positions and had to make sure my soldiers received both the proper immediate care and that the Line of Duty paperwork was completed. If you are active duty that does not apply. There is no LoD paperwork to review because you are always on duty. A reserve component soldier has to prove the injury was in the line of duty. For an active duty soldier the Army has to take steps to label the injury as not line of duty usually through disciplinary procedures.
I was on pass. I took a trip to Switzerland from Germany to go skiing. I blew out my knee. I was certainly “On a frolic of my own.” All the VA cared about was that I had medical records that documented the injury and that the injury occurred during my active duty time. I received a 10% disability rating. If the same thing happened while I was in the National Guard the VA would not cover it because I was not on duty.
It’s extremely hard to make a service member ineligible for VA benefits. That’s by design. If he has not been court martialed he will get most if not all his VA benefits. Even if denied VA benefits there are ways to appeal and get coverage.
Someone else can speak to the quality of the care. I just get a small deposit every month. The common complaint is how slow they are. I put in paperwork to be reevaluated for my knees, hearing loss and issues under the new PACT act. I just received my first call back 6 months later.
I have had good (but now expensive) insurance so I have never tried to go through the VA. I know I could go there and be covered for care on my knees 100%. I do know there is a way to get further care but I haven’t looked into it.
An active duty retiree would be covered for life under Tricare, the military health insurance. As a National Guard retiree I am eligible for that when I reach 60 years old. When I retired I was eligible for Tricare Retired Reserve Select. It’s ridiculously expensive and more than what I’m paying now so I don’t bother.
Thanks, Loach. I’ll bring that up with him.
The following ought to be familiar-ish to ex-servicemembers, but for others …
I was a USAF regular officer but did not retire; I simply voluntarily separated at a time when USAF and I owed each other nothing. I had no documented service-related disability at that time. My hearing is a mess now, but how much of that to lay at the feet of 8 years of USAF & Army service, or 20 years of airline, or a lot of civilian shooting & noisy machinery from a young age is an imponderable to me.
VA has a table of priorities for who gets care. For the lower priority folks, there’s also means testing. There’s substantially no way I could ever get any benefit from VA medical care. Their supply of money and caregivers doesn’t get nearly far enough down the list for me to get anything.
That’s fine with me; I’d much rather they spend that incremental money on some 35yo former Sergeant with no legs.
But the general idea that the VA takes care of everything for everyone who was ever a service member might have been true right after WW-II but sure hasn’t been so in the 45-ish years I’ve been in or out of DoD.
If you go to them seeking help with PTSD, they will definitely give you PTSD.
FWIW, as a medically retired veteran, I do qualify to get all my healthcare through the VA, but I haven’t gotten much in the way of actual healthcare thanks in part to (1) the pandemic and (2) I am 99% convinced they don’t know how to help anyone who is under the age of… whatever happens to be the age of the youngest living Vietnam veteran at any given moment in time. They don’t give a flying fuck about my age cohort.
IMHO.
More likely they’ll spend it on a 75 year-old with any number of health conditions typically associated with being a member of an aging population. Which, to be clear, I am happy they have healthcare, I just wish… the VA didn’t seem setup to help only them.