Noteboom The Law Firm

Many Veterans Denied Their Owed VA Health Care

February 4, 2011 - A recent study showed approximately 2200 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans died in 2008 because they could not afford health insurance. The first question jumping to mind may be why these veterans did not access Department of Veterans (VA) health care. The simple answer is that while these veterans may have been aware of the availability of VA health care, at least some of them most likely did not qualify.

For many veterans without service-related injuries, their income is too high to qualify for VA health care. It is these unfortunate circumstances that allow certain veterans to get fall between the cracks of the VA health care system.

The amount of money a veteran is allowed to make in order to allow access VA health care without a service-related injury is astonishingly low. For example, veterans without dependents cannot make more than $29,400 per year if they want to use the VA health care to which they are entitled. Veterans with up to 4 dependents can only earn $41,300 before their eligibility for VA health care is eliminated.

For those veterans not provided with health insurance through their employer, these salaries are not enough to cover the expense of health insurance. At the same time, veterans cycling back to the U.S. following a deployment to Iraq and/or Afghanistan return to higher unemployment rates than occur among citizens in the private sector. Additionally, veterans represent an unbalanced amount of homeless people in this country. Many will take any work available, and what money they do make is often too much to qualify them for both VA health care and Medicaid.

So these veterans make too much to draw VA health care and too little to afford private insurance. Some studies have shown those uninsured die at a 40% higher rate than those with insurance. Coupling that number with 1 in 5 suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and that most private health insurers considering PTSD a pre-existing condition, and many veterans are finding themselves in difficult circumstances.