The California Work Incentives Initiative at the World Institute on Disability, Oakland, California, conducted a series of meetings with expert veterans’ and disability organizations to assess how U.S. veterans obtain benefits information, and how veterans learn about benefit programs as they plan for paid work.

Key Questions for the Report

• What issues do veterans face in learning about available, benefits, or in moving from benefits to paid work?
  
• Do adequate online tools and information exist to allow veterans to take control of their benefits planning decisions?
  
• Are providers of veterans’ benefits services well-served by existing online resources?
  
• If new tolls are warranted, what are they and where would they be most effectively located?
  

Veterans today can access the VA’s Disability Pension and Disability Compensation cash benefit programs (the latter possibly modified by a finding of Individual Unemployability); military retirement benefits and Combat-Related Special Compensation, administered by the Department of Defense; Social Security’s SSDI and SSI cash disability benefits; health coverage through the VA, DoD’s TRICARE, Medicaid, or Medicare; Section 8 housing subsidies; food stamps; and numerous programs operated by the states. The VA presumes that certain illnesses or conditions are service-related if the veteran served in certain places at certain times. The rules governing each of these programs are daunting in themselves. But many veterans are facing compounded complexity: these programs interact intricately with each other, and with changes in earned income or other routine life changes.

The project found that veterans and their service providers struggle to navigate these complex rules with handheld calculators, worksheets, and self-designed spreadsheets. These tools and services vary in their sophistication and quality and can fail to portray a comprehensive picture of the effect of work—or other life changes—on veterans and related benefits. With incomplete information, some veterans make decisions that produce unexpected and adverse impacts on household income. Others—frustrated by the lack of clear information—delay or abandon their employment or other plans.  

Veterans with disabilities experience high rates of unemployment, poverty and homelessness. Numerous factors hamper the responsible agencies in delivering needed services to veterans.

• Claims for VA disability benefits increased 36% from 2000 to 2005 and the backlog has never been higher.
• Program rules are complicated and arcane, and there are complex interactions among programs within and between agencies.
• The Army Times reported that as a result of the length of the disability claims process, many disabled soldiers are falling into poverty before benefits arrive.
• Evidentiary hurdles make disability claims for such common conditions as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) difficult to establish without expert help.
• The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that the VA has substantially under spent in implementing its Mental Health Strategic Plan.
• Our expert panelists pointed out that employees of the VA are prohibited by law from assisting veterans in preparing disability claims.

The VA designed its Benefits Delivery at Discharge (BDD) program to improve the timeliness of disability benefit delivery. The program succeeds in doing so; claims processed through BDD were resolved on average in 76 days versus 183 days through normal channels. But the GAO identified significant flaws in the BDD system. Members of the National Guard and Reserves have little or no access to BDD. Veterans are made aware of the BDD program in their VA benefits briefings on discharge – mentioned by our panelists as the most important way vets learn about available benefits as they leave the service. But the briefings are not mandatory; the Department of Defense has set a goal of 85% attendance but has no plan for reaching that goal.

Delays in the processing of disability claims, persistent backlogs, and low return-to-work rates are by no means confined to the VA. Veterans frequently rely on benefits and services from the Social Security Administration (SSA) and other agencies. The GAO found that a lack of coordination among agencies exacerbates problematic outcomes for veterans caught in the middle.

Given all this, it is not surprising that our expert panelists cited a high degree of frustration among veterans in dealing with the VA, saying many avoid dealing with the agency entirely. Veterans Service Organizations, state veterans’ affairs agencies, and others exist to guide vets through a multiagency minefield. But panelists noted that the quality of service actually delivered in the field varies widely.

Internet technology drives an increasing opportunity to empower veterans and service providers by providing real time

• Comprehensive, plain-language information
• On benefits across multiple agencies
• With interactive assistance in finding the most relevant programs, and
• With interactive calculations to help visualize the consequences of program interactions and the effects of earned income on existing benefits.

Our expert panelists agreed that no such national tools exist. A search of online resources confirms this conclusion.

The National Symposium for the Needs of Young Veterans (November 9, 2006) cited among the barriers to veterans in obtaining benefits and post-benefit employment: the “[l]ack of pre-, during- and post-deployment education tools and support to service members and their families;” the “…[l]ack of training and knowledge for providers and veterans on specific disabilities, program details, the appeals process, and veterans’ entitlements;” and the “[l]ack of a single, trusted place to go for information and resources.”

We propose two important online tools that can use available technologies to bring veterans’ benefits information services up to par and up to date, with the goal of dramatically improving quality of life for large numbers of U.S. veterans. We envision a two-year research and design window to build these tools.

With universal consensus from the project’s subject matter experts, the project makes the following recommendations:

• Design, test and launch an Online Veterans’ Benefits Information Navigator tool. To provide veterans with the means to connect to vital resources, we propose producing an informational guide to VA and DoD veterans’ programs on a web based portal. The portal would feature an interactive front-end “Navigator” tool that will lead the user quickly to appropriate programs for that user’s situation.
• Design, test and launch a Veterans’ Benefits and Work Calculator. Veterans who are receiving Disability Compensation or Disability Pension, and considering paid work, would use this online calculator to receive credible estimates of the effects of paid work on veterans and related benefits.
• House these online tools and information services in a non-profit setting. The Veterans’ Benefits Information Navigator and the Veterans’ Benefits and Work Calculator should be embedded in a comprehensive informational web site and housed and maintained by a non-profit organization outside of government.
  

No one in this project considers online tools and information to be substitutes for one-on-one counseling with trained service organization experts. But they can help veterans take better control of their own benefits planning process, and help bring better-informed veterans to the table.

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References

Vital Mission: Ending Homelessness Among Veterans. Homelessness Research Institute, 2007. http://www.endhomelessness.org/files/1839_file_Vital_Mission_Final.pdf

Mitigating Effect of Department of Veterans Affairs Disability Benefits for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder on Low Income. Military Medicine, February 2005.

Statement by Ronald R. Aument, Deputy Under Secretary for Benefits, Department of Veterans Affairs, before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, December 7, 2005. http://www.va.gov/OCA/testimony/hvac/051207RA.asp

Troops risk ruin while awaiting benefit checks. Army Times, June 18, 2008. http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/06/ap_wounded_soldiers_061608/

Kathleen A. Tarr, Above and Beyond: Veterans Disabled by Military Service. Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy, Vol. V, No. 1, p. 39 (1997).

VA Health Care: Spending for Mental Health Strategic Plan Initiatives Was Substantially Less Than Planned. General Accountability Office, November 2006. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0766.pdf

Veterans’ Disability Benefits: Better Accountability and Access Would Improve the Benefits Delivery at Discharge Program. General Accountability Office, September 2008. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08901.pdf

Federal Disability Programs: More Strategic Coordination Could Help Overcome Challenges to Needed Transformation. General Accountability Office, May 2008. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08635.pdf

Voices for Action: A Focus on the Changing Needs of America’s Veterans. Report of the National Symposium for the Needs of Young Veterans, hosted by AMVETS, November 6, 2006. http://www.veteransnationalsymposium.org/Assets/PDFs/Healthcare1.pdf