Being a Veteran

Should you file an intent to file while still on active duty?

Being a Veteran, Disability Claims /
If you’d rather not read this post, you can watch the video.

You should not file an intent to file while you are still on active duty. At best it will do nothing for you, and at worst you could end up with an overpayment from the VA and have to pay it back. Although, that scenario is probably unlikely.

The intent to file form is a tool that preserves a veteran’s effective date for a claim. An effective date sets the earliest point in time when the VA will pay you disability benefits. If you file a disability claim within one year of coming off active duty, your effective date will be the day after your separation date. That is as early as it can possibly be. So, filing an intent to file two or three months before you get out can’t help you.

For the same reason, it doesn’t make any sense to file an intent to file during that first year after you separate. Say you file an intent to file two months after you get out and then file a claim 8 months later, your effective date is going to be the day after you separated, not the date of your intent to file. So again, the intent to file did nothing for you, and in that case, if the VA uses it, it actually hurts by costing you two months’ worth of benefits.

Now, if you don’t think you are going to get a claim filed at all in that first year, then an intent to file can help, but in that case, you’re still better off just filing a claim for anything you think is wrong with you. I mean, if all you do is file a claim form that says, my right shoulder’s jacked up. That would probably be better at least in terms of preserving your effective date.

If you are still in service you can file a claim between 90 and 180 days before you get out. That won’t hurt anything. But really, I think the best thing you can do to help yourself disability-wise is to gather all the evidence you can, medical records, orders, awards all that stuff. And for every medical or mental health problem you have, ask yourself, did the Army cause it or make it worse, and if the answer is yes, then file a claim for it.

The word disability makes us think about a person who is missing limbs and has to use a wheelchair. So a lot of veterans won’t file a claim because they don’t think they are broken enough for disability. I felt the same way when I got out. This was before I was ever a lawyer or even thought about helping veterans with VA appeals. The reason I filed a claim was for my wife. Because I knew, eventually everything I did in the Army would catch up to me, and I would be old and broken, and generally grumpy if not completely irritable, and my wife was going be the one who suffered. So I did it for her. And I also knew my claim would be a lot easier to prove right when I got out than 30 years from now.

If you don’t have a similar reason, think about it this way. If the Army broke it or made it worse, the VA has an obligation to take care of it. So file a claim. And start gathering your records before you take your uniform off because afterward, it’ll only get harder.

I hope that helps some of you. If you’d like me to help you with your VA disability claim, you can reach out to me through the links on this page.

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Community Care Basics

Being a Veteran, Community Care, Uncategorized, VA Health Care /
Community Care Basics

I’m not going to be able to cover everything there is to cover about community care, but I do want to talk about some of the basics that you should be aware of. And just to make sure we’re all on the same page, when I say community care, I’m talking about medical care, paid for by the VA, but not at a VA hospital or clinic.

First of all, always get community care approved by the VA first, unless it is a medical emergency, or it’s an urgent care type situation. I’ll get into both of those in a minute. If you are dealing with a chronic medical problem or if it’s a new problem that’s just popped up but it’s not immediately life-threatening, you have no excuse. Contact the VA, get it approved ahead of time, and get proof of that approval. The VA will typically mail you a letter with confirmation, but you can also find it online. Log on to VA.gov, follow the links to your medical records, get to your ‘VA Blue Button Report’ it should be in there. I know, I can find my community care referrals in there but sometimes it might take a few days for the referral to show up in the records. I’ve made a video on how to access your VA medical records, which you should be able to find here.

If you go somewhere for medical care without prior approval, don’t kid yourself, you’re taking a big risk. Ask yourself, can I pay for this visit or treatment or whatever out of my own pocket. If the answer is no, and it’s not a medical emergency, please consider waiting on that approval.

Ok, so what about medical emergencies? If you are receiving VA health care for a service-connected disability or you’ve been seen by the VA in the last two years, the VA will pay for emergency medical care as long as your medical situation is such that a prudent layperson would reasonably expect that a delay in seeking immediate medical attention would be hazardous to life or health. Also, expect that the VA will try to move you to a VA hospital when you are stable. If you refuse that transfer, the VA will no longer pay. Also, note that it is very important that you contact the VA within 72 hours to let them know you are in or went to the emergency room. This part is important although it may not be a deal-breaker as far as the VA paying, so think about who are the people that are going to show up when you are in the ER and make sure they know that the VA needs to be notified.

With urgent care, there are two big things to be aware of. First, you have to make sure that you have been seen by your VA primary care team at some point within the past 2 years. So just make sure you get your annual checkup from the VA, and you’re good with that. Second, you have to make sure the urgent care provider is approved by the VA. Use this link to the VA’s website where you can search for approved urgent care providers in your area. This is a good thing to know before you’re in a situation where you need to go to urgent care. I’ve used this program personally, and have had no problems with it. So it is possible. And if you are in doubt, go ahead and call the VA first and ask them if it’s ok for you to go to urgent care for whatever you’ve got going on.

For any of this treatment, remember that depending on your situation with the VA, the VA may charge you a co-pay. If they do, the VA will bill you for that separately. I should add again that, if you haven’t been to a VA hospital or clinic in the last two years for some type of medical treatment, don’t expect the VA to pay for your community care.

There’s so much more that could be said about this topic, this only covers the basics. Even though this wasn’t about a disability issue, if you’d like me to help you with your VA disability claims, you can reach out to me through the links on this page.

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How to Get your VA Health Records from the VA Website

Being a Veteran, VA General /

It is possible for you to access all of your VA medical records through the VA’s website. I’m going to talk you through how to do that, but first, you’ll need to make sure you have created an account to access the VA system. There are three different options for that. You can use a DS log on if you have one, my healthevet, if you’ve already signed up and have one of those, or a third website called id.me. And if you don’t have any of those, I recommend using the id.me. It is far and away, the most convenient way for you to prove you are who you say you are and get access to the VA’s website.

It is just a super convenient way for you to get this all set up. All you need is a computer, a phone that takes pictures and, a couple of pieces of government issued ID. You don’t have to leave your house. You literally do it all in a few minutes. There’s one caveat. If you’re an Iraq or Afghanistan vet and need to sign up for the VA’s the national burn pit registry, I’m pretty sure you can only do that with a DS log on account. But even if that is you, if you haven’t done any of this before, I still recommend go ahead and go ahead and getting the id.me account. It’s it’s super fast and easy, and it’ll get you to your VA medical records in the quickest way possible.

Id.me has produced a great video on how to create an account, and they’ve done a much better job than I could have. So I’m going to link to that video to the right. I recommend you go watch that video, sign up for an id.me account, and then come back here, and I’ll walk through how to then log in to the VA system and get access to your records.

For this next video, I’m going to just go straight to my computer screen and I’ll walk you through how to navigate the VA’s website and find your medical records. I generally like to put a transcript here for people who’d rather read than watch the video but in this case, I recommend just watching the video.

As always, if you feel like you need some help in your fight with the VA, reach out to me through the contact information on this website. I’m happy to see if I can help.

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If You’re a Veteran, You Need to Apply for VA Benefits

Being a Veteran /

If you’re a veteran, I don’t care if you just got out yesterday or if you’ve been out for 40 years, from one veteran to another, I’d like you to do two things, apply for VA healthcare and file a claim for VA disability compensation. Now, if you haven’t done those things yet, and you’re a veteran, you’re probably thinking things like I’ve got healthcare. I’m fine. I don’t want some VA doc touching me, VA benefits are for people who got blown up. I’m just as healthy as the day I went in, I’ve got new issues. I get it. I was wounded in 2005 and I didn’t get out of the army until 2012. When I did get out, I didn’t want to apply for disability benefits. I didn’t feel disabled. I still don’t. I’m not. And I didn’t like the label. Plus I know a lot of brothers and sisters who I served with who have it a whole lot worse than me.

Ultimately I did apply. And what got me through that hurdle was thinking about my family, because I know that eventually all of this stuff that happened is going to catch up to me and maybe I can suffer through it fine and tell myself I deserve it or whatever. But I got to thinking about my wife and, you know, she, she’s the one that’s going to really suffer when I am old broken and just a general grumpy pain in the ass. She’s the one that’s going to have to put up with me. And I thought, you know, I need to apply so that, down the road, I can still help my family because these things might catch up to me and I might lose some of my ability to do that.

Any veteran applying for benefits does not take benefits away from somebody else who may need them more. You applying for VA healthcare does not mean you have to go to the VA for your healthcare. It just gets your name in the system, which has benefits down the road and having a disability from the VA doesn’t mean you’re missing limbs. It’s basically just the VA’s way to describe the extent to which the military broke you. And here’s the deal, being in the military takes its toll on all of us, mentally and physically. And think of it this way. We, we all volunteered to serve our country. VA benefits are one of the ways that our country tries to make it right on the back end. And if the military broke you, I don’t care how major or how minor the VA needs to step in and help out with that.

But the VA is not going to come to your door and find you, you have to take the first step. Now there are tons of organizations that’ll help you. You can do yourself. You can go to va.gov, you can call me. I’m happy to help you anyway, I can. There’s the, the Legion, the VFW, Military Order of the Purple Heart, every state has veteran service officers and its their job to help walk you through this process and get you in the system and get you some help and some benefits, so, take advantage of that and do it. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, do it for your family do for the people in your life that that’s still want to be in your life 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years down the road. Do for them, but just do it.

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