Noteboom The Law Firm

VA Set to Offer Veterans More Post-Incarceration Health Care

April 4, 2011 - The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) offers health care to veterans following their incarceration. As part of a new program focusing on decreasing repeat offenses among veterans, the VA is going to offer even more health care benefits to all qualifying veterans living in halfway houses as well as other provisional, post-incarceration housing.

There are many factors that will combine to determine the fate of veterans after they are released from incarceration. Research performed in 2008 revealed some of those factors include not having health and/or mental health care available. For those newly released inmates, that fate can include homelessness, but for many it is a return trip to prison and many of those facing that future are veterans eligible to receive VA health care. 

Those veterans given obligatory health care from federal, state, or local government sources are barred from receiving VA provided health care. Generally, those parameters include prisoners. The rule barring those prisoners from receiving VA health care will be changed. The new rule will allow the VA to provide health care to any qualifying veterans residing in transient, post-incarceration housing, which includes halfway houses. 

Somewhere between 29,000 and 56,000 veterans become ex-inmates every year from state and federal prisons. County jails release about 90,000 veterans every year. If providing health and mental health care prevents these veterans from returning to prisons and can help them adjust to a post-prison environment, then the VA is on the right track.