Law helps too few as disability fraud goes on
Navy Times,  "Opinion"
2 December 2002

The writer is a retired senior chief journalist who served aboard five Navy ships

.Concurrent receipt is finally going to become law and will better compensate veterans with combat-related disabilities. Disability payments no longer will be deducted from the veteran’s retirement pay.

Passage came after an emotionally draining battle: No politician wants to appear to be anti-veteran, but lawmakers are nonetheless apprehensive about the bill’s cost. Thus, the version of the bill that was passed limits concurrent payment to veterans with combat-related disabilities.

Combat related? Does that mean concurrent disability pay will be granted to one whose leg was blown off by a land mine, but not to a diver who lost his leg during a salvage mishap, as happened to legendary Master Chief Petty Officer Carl Brashear?

How about post-traumatic stress? Think Mogadishu, Somalia or what might happen if the United States gets bogged down with urban warfare in downtown Baghdad: Troops inadvertently may kill unarmed civilians and children, yet the psychological wounds won’t surface until later. How about a career soldier or Marine who is traumatized when a youngster under his charge is killed in a live-fire exercise — would either be eligible for possible post-trauma care?

We’ll undoubtedly have the requisite boards evaluate claims about whether or not disabilities were combat-caused. But boards cannot just rubber-stamp a claim. They must be more assiduous in identifying existing, and future, fraudulent claims if we want to avoid bankrupting the Veterans Affairs Department.

When I prepared to muster out of the Navy a decade ago, shipmates told me to claim all the disability I could. “For what?” I would ask. The answer was, it’s easy and gets you extra dollars in your monthly retainer check. That’s right: Once you get your DD-214 for the final time, your checks become retainer pay, not retirement pay.

Unless you successfully claimed enough — or the right — disability, you could theoretically be recalled in a national emergency, at least until your 30-year anniversary of entering the service. Nonetheless, other than gray hair and 23 years of often physically taxing liberty,

I had no legitimate disability claims.Others I’ve known didn’t see it that way. They acted almost as though it was their right to claim disability. Some would claim 20 percent or 30 percent (an infected hangnail?) to well above 50 percent disability. Legitimate?

In many cases, absolutely not. Some really did have permanent aftereffects from injuries — injuries sometimes suffered while on liberty and which usually involved alcohol. Should the taxpayer fund these through disability pay?

The system must clean itself up and make money available to those who sustained not only combat disabilities but serious, permanent injury from being on the job.Conversely, we also must realize that when one spends 20 years in a physically demanding career — military or civilian — age inevitably will take its toll.

As the years go by, our eyes, ears and muscles just don’t work the way they did during our younger years, in or out of uniform.Granted, someone who continuously works in a noisy environment — the flight deck or flight line — might have legitimate cause for hearing-loss claims.

Otherwise, let’s not confuse disability with aging.Let’s pay disabled veterans injured while performing their duties, whether in combat or otherwise. But let’s scrupulously verify such disabilities.

We must weed out those who attempt to circumvent the system to line their pockets while costing taxpayers millions and robbing needy, disabled vets and VA centers of badly needed dollars.

In their award-winning book “Stolen Valor: How The Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History,” authors B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley document VA disability fraud by so-called Vietnam veterans claiming post-traumatic stress disorder and other Vietnam trauma. In reality, these “veterans” never set foot in Southeast Asia.

Meanwhile, as thousands of Persian Gulf War veterans suffer legitimate, but still unknown, illnesses, there are probably hundreds of frauds receiving money.Let’s eradicate this disability-claim nonsense. Those who make the military a career and who age normally must quit whining and seeking payment for a little scrape incurred on the job.

Conversely, we should not penalize the retirement pay for those vets who suffered real, documented injuries in combat, or otherwise. The system must clamp down on disability payments for injuries sustained while away from the job. It’s time to hold people acccountable for their actions.
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Pentagon deceit derailed concurrent receipt

By Mike Lazorchak
Special to Navy Times
2 December 2002 Issue

Only seconds remained in the final game in old Congressional Stadium. The score was tied, the ball was on the goal line and the underdog Concurrent Receipts were virtually certain to punch it in for a stirring victory.

Then the speaker of the house turned out the stadium lights. One of the strengths of our form of government is the freedom to lobby Congress for or against a proposed legislative initiative. Therefore, retirees should not condemn David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, who made clear the Pentagon’s views on the law that requires a dollar-for-dollar offset in retired pay for those who also receive disability compensation.

Chu told Congress and the taxpayers: “The current overall retirement system and health-care plans already do a good job of taking care of [disabled military retirees]. Therefore we do not feel there is a need or justification for extra payments.”Retirees also should recognize Defense Department and White House Office of Management and Budget officials used an excellent tactic by recommending that President Bush veto the 2003 defense authorization bill if it contained any form of concurrent receipt.

Despite overwhelming congressional support for concurrent receipt, this challenge sent a shiver of self-doubt through Congress, with lawmakers questioning whether they had the will to override a veto.

While the debate over concurrent receipt was in full swing earlier this year, Chu stepped way over the line by making deceptive allegations in a Pentagon media blitz aimed at misleading some lawmakers and taxpayers to believe approval of concurrent receipt would impact national security and cause significant consequences for active-duty and reserve service members.

Chu delivered a morale blow to active-duty enlisted people by telling them concurrent receipt would draw funding away from other programs, such as new barracks construction. If concurrent receipt passed, he in essence said service members would just have to suck it up and continue to endure whatever deprivations follow.

On other occasions, he told veterans they would not be able to get care at VA hospitals and told deployed combat troops they might not have enough ammunition, supplies and other equipment if DoD had to pay more money to a small number of retirees who already get one of the best retirement packages in America.

In an October 2002 letter to Charles Abell, Chu’s deputy, Rep. Michael Bilirakis, R-Fla., a concurrent receipt champion and member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, refuted these false allegations and requested an end to the overheated rhetoric.

“Your argument that funding for concurrent receipt will hurt current service members is misleading,” Bilirakis said. “Neither I nor any of my colleagues would suggest that other personnel funding be cut to pay for concurrent receipt, and the enactment of it won’t negatively impact military readiness.

If there were any question that my legislation would have such a negative impact, I sincerely doubt that it would have garnered the support of more than 90 percent of the House ... and 80 percent of the Senate.

”When Congress returned in mid-November after its election recess, it appeared the major political power shift to the Republicans would be the final nail in the concurrent receipt coffin this year. Fortunately, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., made a successful personal appeal to the White House to accept a scaled-back concurrent receipt provision that provides additional payments to certain retirees whose disability resulted from combat, combat-oriented training, hazardous duties or other “instrumentalities of war.

”DoD was given authority and responsibility to develop eligibility criteria and application procedures. Until the eligibility rules are published in about six months, it is not possible to predict how many retirees will qualify. Initial estimates, however, are that 35,000 or fewer disabled retirees will meet the stringent criteria.

While the compensation legislation falls far short of what Congress hoped — and promised — to give the military, it is, Warner said, “an essential beachhead in law which the Congress hopes to expand in the future.

Mike Lazorchak, a retired Air Force colonel, designed and implemented pay-and-benefits programs at the installation, command and Pentagon levels. You can e-mail him at retiredmilitary@atpco.com  .
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Disability pay could be a cost too steep to bear
Special retiree pay could leave DoD scrambling to cover funding

By Rick Maze
NavyTimes staff writer
2 December 2002

A congressional plan to help disabled retirees could hurt active and reserve members by robbing money from the budget for military pay, Pentagon officials warn.

When lawmakers included a new special pay for disabled retirees in the 2003 defense authorization bill, they didn’t give the Pentagon extra money to cover the payments. At the time they struck a compromise with the White House to include the payment, this didn’t seem to be a problem because the rough estimates of congressional aides put the annual cost at a relatively low $200 million.

Payments, which could range from $105 to $2,100 a month for military retirees with service-connected disabilities who meet strict eligibility rules, are expected to begin in May after the Pentagon sets up application and review procedures.

Because no better projections were available, lawmakers approved the defense bill Nov. 13 with the $200 million estimate in mind, believing the Pentagon could easily absorb that expense from the $93.8 billion set aside for personnel costs in the $392.8 billion defense authorization bill.

But new cost estimates on the special pay from the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office are far larger — up to $600 million a year. This new figure is enough to alarm defense officials, who now are worried about how to cover the cost.

The main reason for the huge gap in cost projections is that no one is sure how many people will be eligible. Estimates range from 9,800 to about 35,000.“We could have a big problem with the money,” said a senior defense personnel official.

“We simply do not know at this point how we are going to pay for it.”

‘A lot of money’

While $600 million out of $93.8 billion might not seem like much, defense officials note it’s enough to fund full pay and allowances for 10,000 active-duty people or a 1.5 percent pay raise for all active and reserve members. “In the personnel world, this is a lot of money,” the defense official said.

The May 1 start date for payments both helps and hurts the Pentagon in trying to absorb the cost.It helps because with the fiscal year running from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, the Pentagon must cover only four months of payments in fiscal 2003, which should be much less than the estimated $600 million cost for a full year.

On the other hand, the May 1 start date means Pentagon officials won’t have a good idea of how many people might actually be eligible in time to ask for extra money as part of a supplemental budget, submitted to Congress in late February or early March.

What’s more, the willingness of Congress to provide extra money is unclear. Senate aides said Bush administration officials had no objections about the costs in negotiations with Sen. John Warner, R-Va., over the special pay. “If cost wasn’t a problem for the White House, it will take some convincing for us to believe it’s a problem now,” an aide said.

Limited options

Defense and service officials don’t know what they will do if they don’t get extra money, but their options are limited.

One of the fastest and easiest ways to save money in personnel accounts is to reduce the number of people on the payroll by slowing recruiting. But this option is out because Congress removed the flexibility to cut personnel levels.

This leaves slowing promotions, delaying or eliminating permanent-change-of-station moves or reducing incentive pays and bonuses as available measures to cut costs.

The new special pay was a compromise to earlier proposals that would have given most or all military retirees with service-connected disabilities full retired pay and veterans’ disability compensation.

Under current law, retired pay is offset dollar-for-dollar by the amount received in disability pay. The Bush administration, like previous administrations over the last two decades, opposes “concurrent receipt.” Warner offered the special pay — limited to retirees with 20 years of service whose disabilities specifically result from combat or combat-like training — as a compromise.

Full concurrent receipt could cost the Pentagon $2 billion a year or more.
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Submitted,
YNCS Don Harribine, USN(Ret)