VA official: Get the word out about final PACT Act deadline
Through the PACT Act, veterans who deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and other combat zones have a special opportunity to enroll directly in VA health care without first applying for VA benefits. Those veterans who deployed to a combat zone, but never enrolled in VA health care, and left active duty between Sept. 11, 2001, and Oct. 1, 2013, are eligible to enroll directly in VA health care by 11:59 p.m. local time on Sept. 30, 2023.
Shereef Elnahal, VA’s Under Secretary for Health, used part of his time before The American Legion’s Veterans Affairs & Rehabilitation Commission to urge Legionnaires to get the word out about the deadline and urge veterans to take advantage of this earned opportunity.
“The PACT Act reopened that window for veterans who separated more than 10 years ago who served in the post-9/11 conflicts,” said on Aug. 26 during the Legion’s national convention in Charlotte, N.C. “If you enroll in VA healthcare, that is a status you may take for life. That’s why this critical window of opportunity is so important.
“All of you, by definition, are leaders in your communities for veterans. Please reach out to the vets who served in these conflicts, especially the ones who separated before 2013, and let them know about the direct healthcare system enrollment opportunity.”
Switching gears, Elnahal said women veterans are the fastest-growing demographic in VA. “Twenty percent of new enrollees in our healthcare system are women,” he said. “We take really seriously the obligation of providing a safe, comfortable and progressive care environment for women veterans.”
That comes, Elnahal said, through legislation such as the Women’s Health, Innovation and Staffing Enhancement initiative. “What that is is a requirement to hire a Womens Health Care Coordinators at every single medical center in the country,” Elnahal said. “On top of that, we have a training program … to make sure that providers that have been in the system for years … understand what things they may need to be looking out for when women come in for care.”
Also addressing the commission was Isle Wiechers, deputy executive director of VA’s Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. She shared that VA’s “National Buddy Check Week” – a program The American Legion has been practicing for more than four years – will take place Oct. 16-20.
“I understand The American Legion was very engaged in advocating for this being included in legislation,” she said. “And in support of Buddy Check Week, we’ve been developing scripts for veterans to use to conduct those wellness checks, with information on referrals and resources available. We’re working to create and have deployed training, both online and in-person. We have opportunities for members of organizations that represent veterans, such as your own, to learn how to train individuals to conduct peer wellness checks and training on how to effectively transfer a call directly over to the VCL (Veterans Crisis Line) should that be needed.
“And we’re also standing up resilience training for the people that are making those peer calls in case there are things that become stressful.”
Wiechers highlighted two programs designed to keep in contact with veterans who call the department’s Veterans Crisis Line (dial 988, press 1): the Caring Letters program and the Peer Support Outreach Call Center.
“After vets calls the VCL, we reach out to them with written letters for up to six months afterward,” Wiechers said. “Reaching out and establishing a connection, helping to ensure they still feel connected to VA and feel comfortable to us if they need more help.”
With the call center, Wiechers said, “Instead of calls coming into the VCL, we make calls out. We’re reaching out to veterans who’ve called the crisis line before, providing support and hope and recovery-oriented services information to veterans.”
Mike Frueh, VA’s Assistant Under Secretary for Benefits, also provided an update on PACT Act filings, but later also provided a warning to anyone filing VA claims. Referencing “claims sharks,” he said claims agents have opportunities to extract millions from veterans they’re claiming to help.
“Veterans earned a benefit, and we want to deliver that benefit,” Frueh said. “And some people are stepping into the way of this process and charging veterans for it. And it’s money coming out of veterans’ pockets. There’s $24 billion potential this year alone that veterans won’t get. And these claims agents don’t care if they get it right.
“If we can do anything to stop these people, I want to do it. We have people that do this for a living, do this with their heart, they mean it, and they do it for free. Veterans should never have to pay to access the benefits they’ve earned. They’ve already paid.”
Later in the day during the commission’s breakout session, Paul Sullivan reiterated Frueh’s warning to the Veterans Benefits Committee. Sullivan is the director of Veteran Outreach for the law firm Bergman & Moore, which in October of 2022 entered into a entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Legion to provide veterans benefits consultation for accredited Legion service officers can help potential plaintiffs understand the Camp Lejeune Justice Act (CLJA).
“There are about 25 of these claim shark companies that in the past three years have robbed about 300,000 veterans of, about, at least, about a couple hundreds of millions of dollars per year in their VA benefits,” Sullivan said. “This is a very serious problem growing in scope as we speak. I’m trying to point out that the scope of claims sharks is huge, and it’s growing worse.”
Sullivan offered simple advice to avoid being ripped off by a claims shark: use a VA-accredited service officer such as those provided by The American Legion, free of charge.
“Rule No. 1: Do not pay the sharks,” he said. “If you’ve already signed a contract, you still don’t have to pay them. If you’ve already paid money, ask for your money back. A contract for illegal purposes is unenforceable.”
The commission also got an update on VA’s lengthy transition to an Electronic Health Record (EHR), something the Department of Defense already utilizes. Oracle Cerner is in charge of the transformation; the commission heard from Pat Sargent with Oracle Health Federal and Cerner’s Lauren Andry.
This April, VA suspended the rollout of the EHR as part of a major reset, and then in May the department announced it had reached a new agreement with Oracle Cerner that it said “dramatically increases” the government’s ability to hold the contractor accountable for reliability, responsiveness and interoperability.
“I want to be a part of a historic federal records transformation. This is our moon shot,” Sargent said. “This system has … 7 million-plus patients being looked at. This system, by far, this EHR is the most complex system in the world, bar none. I’ve told other veterans organizations they should be able to sleep well at night, because the taxpayers’ dollar being spent on this program … if we don’t produce, it goes back to the American people. And I have no problem with that.”
Andry added, “It’s very hard to do transformation at this size and scale. And as many challenges as there are to this … interactions that I get to have with you all at events like this keep us all on focused on exactly why we’re doing this and who we are serving. And we’re incredibly dedicated to getting this right.”
VA’s Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs, Matthew Quinn, asked Legionnaires to think about their families and find out ahead of time if he or she is eligible to be buried in a VA national cemetery. Through a pre-need determination of eligibility, veterans can find out ahead of time wear they can or cannot be buried.
“Not during their time of need should your family be out there looking for your DD-214. My wife would have no idea where my DD-214 is,” Quinn said. “Apply, and we’ll determine prior to your need whether you’re eligible for internment in a national cemetery. That takes that off your family to-do list at a time when that should not be what they’re focused on.”