John Miterko, Army Veteran & TXVO Legislative Liaison

John Miterko was appointed as the Texas Coalition of Veteran’s Organization’s Legislative Liaison in 2008 where he has brought a broad range of experience and knowledge for the benefit of veterans. John will be joining the 2010 Veteran’s Day Telethon live from Texas to talk about legislation pending that effects our veterans and their families and how we can help.

From 1968-1972 John was a U.S. Army Captain, Military Intelligence serving as a Special Area Agent and Area Intelligence Collection Officer. He served in the Republic of Vietnam from 1971-1972 as the Chief of Military Intelligence Collection Operations for the 3rd Military Region RVN. John is the holder of the Bronze Star.

In 2003, John retired from Telecom Systems Division of 3M Company after a 30-year career. Since that time he has devoted his time and energies to multiple Veteran Service Organizations at the local, state, and national level. John is dedicated to defining, promoting, and implementing legislative programs that directly benefit veterans, their families, and their communities, and to increase the effectiveness of the Texas Coalition of Veterans Organizations.

John’s Veterans Service Organizations Affiliations:

• Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) Chapter # 195

• Texas Association of Vietnam Veterans

• Board of Directors and Chairman Veterans Outreach Committee, Vietnam Veterans Memorial on State Capitol grounds

• Military Service Coalition, Austin, Texas

• Vice Chairman, Communications Advisory Committee, Texas Veterans Commission

• VA VISN 17 Veterans Advisory Board

Press Release on June 10, 2010

WASHINGTON – As previously announced on January 7, 2010, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) froze prescription copayment increases for six months.  Veterans who generally have higher income and no service-connected disabilities – referred to as Priority Groups 7 and 8 Veterans – will now pay an additional $1 for each 30-day supply of outpatient medications.  Taking effect July 1, the increase to $9 from $8 is the first change in VA’s medication copay since Jan. 1, 2006.

“Because of the harsh economic reality facing many Veterans, we delayed the change,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki.  “We’re now ensuring the Veterans most in need of VA care are those least affected.  Yet, even with this increase, VA medication copays are lower than much of the private sector.”

This change does not impact Veterans in Priority Groups 2 through 6 who will continue to pay $8 for each 30-day supply of medications for their non-service connected conditions unless otherwise exempted.  These Veterans will also continue to have their out-of-pocket expenses for VA outpatient medications capped at $960 per calendar year.

Veterans who have an injury or illness connected with their military service resulting in a disability rated 50 percent or greater – who are known as Priority Group 1 Veterans — are exempt from the copay.

VA generally sets its outpatient medication copay rate based upon a regulation that ties the rate to the Medical Consumer Price Index for prescription drugs.

Veterans who have difficulty paying co-payments for outpatient medications should discuss the matter with their local VA enrollment coordinator.  Veterans may also contact VA at 1-877-222 VETS (8387) or visit VA’s health eligibility Web site at www.va.gov/healtheligibility .

Recently I have been reading and hearing a lot about challenges that members of the National Guard are facing after returning from serving on active duty.

Historically the National Guard has been seen as the key players right here in our own backyards aiding in natural disaster cleanup and civil emergencies. However, the President has the authority to call the National Guard to active federal duty. Since 9/11, more than 210,000 have been called to active service and 211 have already died in Iraq. As of 2008, the Guard represented 7 percent of the force in Iraq and 15 percent in Afghanistan.

Now these same men and women that are fighting along side our regular active men and women are struggling to receive health care after returning home. And if you can imagine, even more so than their active duty counterparts because of the way that eligibility requirements written long before the start of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I know change in legislation cannot be made overnight, but I also know that it only takes 72 hours to deploy a completely stocked and manned aircraft carrier. Since sometimes all it takes is someone to spell out the “plan”, here it is:

Step 1: Prior to deployment:

• Enlist each of the federally activated guardsmen into the regular Army
• Complete and submit regular military life insurance paperwork
• Exchange each of the National Guard member’s ID cards with regular military ID cards
• Issue regular dog tags
• Deploy

Note: Cost and manpower minimal since we already have active duty personnel performing these functions!

Step 2: Post Deployment:

• Debrief on eligible benefits and where to obtain transition assistance
• Discharge back to National Guard
• Re-issue National Guard ID Card
• Provide copies of all medical and service record paperwork accumulated while on active duty
• Thank them for their service!!!

Note: Again, NO additional resources or manpower is required because we already have personnel performing these functions!

Will this solve the problems with receiving care at the VA in general, NO. But this will solve the problem of National Guardsman being treated as outcasts at the VA after filling the call to duty!

by John McChesney

The Department of Veterans Affairs is struggling to cope with tens of thousands of veterans filing for disability benefits. Because there are applicants from two current wars — plus a new wave from the first Gulf War and Vietnam — thousands are now stuck in the clogged pipeline.

Although the department and its critics differ on exact numbers, everyone agrees that way too many vets are waiting way too long to get benefits.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki is experimenting with ways to get the old, crippled bureaucracy to do better.

A Tidal Wave Of Applicants

The number of outstanding claims at the VA for service-related disabilities — amputations, injured limbs, PTSD, brain trauma — hovers around 500,000. Nearly 40 percent of those have been waiting on a decision for more than four months.

And to make matters worse, another 100,000 claims are waiting for a decision at the Board of Veterans Appeals. The department has responded by hiring thousands of new claims adjudicators, a kind of brute force approach.

But Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense says that won’t solve the problem.

“The Department of Veterans Affairs is so complicated, it would drive a normal person insane in 3 minutes,” Sullivan says.

Sullivan has been battling the VA for years over the backlog issue. For six years, he worked inside the VA. Complexity, he says, is the department’s backbreaking burden, beginning with a veteran’s first perplexing hurdle: a 23-page application form.

“The Department of Veterans Affairs takes three years to train a new employee on how to read that 23-page claim form,” he says.

Because of the intense training, those new hires won’t be online for some time. And Sullivan says the department’s problems are only beginning — he says 440,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have filed disability claims.

“We expect that number to go up to about a million in the next four or five years,” he says. “And more tidal waves are right behind it.”

Those tidal waves will be rolled in by Secretary Shinseki’s new rules allowing claims from Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam and chemical exposure in the first Gulf War. The VA acknowledges that at least 200,000 new applicants will slow down claims processing even more in the future.

A Faceless Bureaucracy

Vietnam veteran John Wood knows something about how long it can take to get benefits. He served in the Army from 1969 to 1972. In Vietnam, he was a cavalry reconnaissance scout near the border with North Vietnam, where he saw several of his fellow soldiers cut down in combat.

“It took me from 1972 to 2006 for the VA to admit that I had post-traumatic stress disorder,” he says. “They were saying that I couldn’t prove that I had any combat status in Vietnam, and so it couldn’t possibly be post-traumatic stress disorder because I wasn’t in combat, which I was.”

The VA insisted that because he had been trained as a clerk, he would not have been sent into combat. But Wood was reassigned when he got to Vietnam. The burden was on Wood to prove that he had been in combat. He solicited testimonial letters from fellow soldiers and dug up after-action reports from Army records to make his case. Thirty-four years later, the VA Board of Appeals acknowledged that he had been in the shooting war and granted his claim.

Another veteran who faced a hard process was Tia Christopher, who was raped in her barracks while she was attending language school to learn Arabic. When she got out of the Navy, she went to a VA hospital for psychological help. Staff at the hospital advised her against filing for disability benefits.

“Even though we got really good health care, they told us it would be really traumatic, a re-traumatizing process to file a claim, and that you basically have to kind of defend yourself. You would basically be put on trial to do this claim. That idea scared the hell out of me,” Christopher says.

But it didn’t scare her enough to keep her from filing a claim, which was denied. Then, with the help of the veterans service organization Swords to Plowshares, she filed an appeal. Eight years later, she won.

For both of these vets, the VA remained a faceless bureaucracy throughout their ordeal.

Critics say it’s not surprising that the VA’s medical branch advised Christopher against filing a claim with the benefits branch because it would be too traumatic. There is a widespread perception that the VA stands against vets rather than for them, they say. And that’s something Secretary Shinseki has set out to change.

“When the new secretary came in, one of the first things that he said to us was a recognition of the fact that many veterans do perceive us that way,” says Michael Walcoff, the VA’s undersecretary for benefits, “and that we need to do whatever we can do to make sure that our people understand that their role is to be an advocate for the veteran, not an adversary.”

It’s a tall order to turn around a huge bureaucracy encumbered by a culture and rules developed over the decades since World War II. But the VA has launched a number of pilot programs to streamline and simplify the application process.

A Possible Solution: Team Delta

One program is in the VA regional office in downtown Pittsburgh. Downstairs in the service center, row after row of white file cabinets stretch across the room, and piled on top are thick bundles of files so big they can’t be put away. Paper rules at the VA; electronic files are years away as the VA builds a new system. All of this paper now lumbers back and forth between the veteran and the VA via snail mail, while veterans almost never have any face-to-face — or even telephone — contact with people handling their claims.

Beth McCoy, the regional office director, says the staff of the pilot program, known as Team Delta, aims to change that by actually making personal calls to veterans.

“We’re surprising them,” McCoy says. ” ‘Is this really the VA calling? No one from VA has ever called me before.’ It’s a positive experience for the veterans, and it’s really a positive experience for our employees. Rather than working with paper files, they’re working more directly with veterans.”

And there are almost unheard-of face to face contacts with veterans — contacts which, the team has discovered, can be wrenchingly emotional.

Vietnam veteran Arthur Rhone says his experience with Team Delta is the best he’s had with the VA.

“They all introduced themselves to me, they’re all nice people and they seem like they’re concerned for me,” he says. “They not here for a paycheck; they here for me.”

Rhone starts his session about a PTSD claim with a tense recitation of the horrors he witnessed in Vietnam, and he ends with a story about the time a mother and daughter were stopped at an American checkpoint. The mother was a Viet Cong suspect carrying a large sum of money. Rhone’s squad leader told him to use the daughter to pressure the mother to confess that she had more money hidden away.

“So they told me … it was during the rainy season … get the girl, jump down in the rice paddy. I’m up to here, I grabbed the girl, she’s about 8 years old, and I ducked her down in the rice paddy till the mama-san told where the money was. I almost drowned her. I live with that every day of my life, OK? It’s with me all the time. I wish you could take your hands and scrub it out my damn brain. You think you can do that for me? Y’all think you can help me do that?”

Rhone jams his chest with his thumb for emphasis. People in the office calm him, but when he sits to sign a document, his hand is shaking so badly he has to steady it with his other hand.

“I appreciate that, you guys. Thank you,” he says.

But Team Delta has only eight people in a bureaucracy of nearly 20,000. The jury is still out on whether its personalized approach is feasible for the entire Veterans Benefits Administration.

Article Source: Disabled Veterans

By Erica Erwin Erie Times-News, Pa.

Apr. 1–New legislation introduced by U.S. Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper aims to make one inevitable part of military life a little easier: moving.

Dahlkemper, of Erie, spent part of Wednesday morning in Erie promoting the Military Spouses Job Continuity Act, which offers a tax credit of up to $500 to any military spouse who has to renew or transfer a professional license because of a transfer order that takes a military family across state lines.

The tax credit would apply specifically to administrative fees paid to licensing boards or certificate-granting institutions, expenses not covered by existing programs.

Military life is a “privilege and a blessing,” but also challenging for soldiers and their families, Dahlkemper, D-3rd Dist., said at a news conference at the Intermodal Transportation Center on Erie’s east bayfront.

“Military families should not have financial burdens imposed on them, directly or indirectly” because of a transfer order, Dahlkemper said. “A fee to re-enter the work force for spouses is exactly the type of indirect cost that our military families should not have to incur.

“This tax credit will remove that extra, indirect cost and help spouses quickly re-enter the work force after a move,” she said. “Getting back to work after a move helps ease the stress of a (Permanent Change of Station) transfer and is another step in our commitment to supporting our troops and their families.”

Dahlkemper said the idea behind the legislation came from a discussion she had with a constituent in 2009, a member of the military who told her about the issues and expenses that came with moving.

Helping spouses with job transitions helps military members, Dahlkemper said.

“There are a lot of things we do to support our military men and women, but if they’re overseas trying to do their job for this country, but they’re worrying about their family, I think that sometimes affects their ability to work,” Dahlkemper said.

From 2008 to 2009, Dahlkemper’s office said, more than 1.1 million active-duty service members in the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Navy received PCS orders.

Nicholas Combitchi, an Army veteran and chapter commander of the Erie chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, spoke in favor of the legislation at the news conference.

“Military life is something that brings me great pride, but it hasn’t always been easy,” Combitchi said. “We all know that moving is a fact of military life. It can be hard on your family to move so frequently, and it can be hard on you, the soldier.

” Congresswoman Dahlkemper’s plan will help military families and make the transitions from move to move easier,” he said.

Article Source:  Professional License Renewal

by John Allen

On March 18, 2010, President Obama signed the new Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (HIRE) into law. This federal legislation creates brand-new tax breaks for hiring and retaining unemployed workers.

Here’s a quick CCG overview on this job creation tax break.

Employers Get a Payroll Tax Holiday for New Hires — Plus a Potential Tax Credit Bonus.

Normally, an employer is required to pay its share of Social Security taxes on wages earned by employees. For 2010, the portion of the tax is 6.2 percent on the first $106,800 of wages.

Under the HIRE Act, an employer is effectively excused from paying its share of the 6.2 percent tax on wages received by “qualified employees.” This exemption applies to wages paid after the date of enactment through the end of 2010. The maximum value for each qualified employee is $6,621.

Example: If a qualified employee is hired in March and receives $50,000 in wages in 2010, the employer saves $3,100 (6.2 percent of $50,000) in Social Security tax.

The new law defines a “qualified employee” as someone who meets all of these criteria:

• Begins work after February 3, 2010 and before January 1, 2011.
• Has not been employed for more than 40 hours during the previous 60 days (ending on the start date).
• Was not hired to replace another employee unless the former employee separated from employment voluntarily or for cause.
• Is not related to the employer and does not own more than 50 percent of the business, either directly or indirectly.

Notes: A qualified employee may be either a full-time employee or a part-time employee. There is no minimum requirement for the hours worked. The payroll tax forgiveness does not apply to the 1.45 percent Medicare portion of payroll tax.

The exemption officially begins with wages paid in the second calendar quarter of 2010. Employers entitled to tax relief for the first quarter will be credited against their general Social Security liability for the second quarter.

Another tax credit bonus: In addition to the payroll tax forgiveness, an employer can claim a tax credit if it retains a qualified worker for a minimum of 52 consecutive weeks. The credit is equal to the lesser of: $1,000 or 6.2 percent of the employee’s wages paid during the 52-week period. If the employee quits or is fired before the end of the one-year period, no credit is allowed.

The new law requires that employers get statements from each eligible new hire certifying that he or she was unemployed during the 60 days before beginning work or, alternatively, worked fewer than a total of 40 hours for someone else during the period. The IRS is currently developing a form employees can use to make the required statement.

HireVeterans.com and CCG have partnered to provide employers with a customized form that the employer will be able to use to claim this lucrative goverment program.    Clearly, the sooner you create the job, the higher the financial benefit rewarded by the government.

Article Source:  http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/03/25/new-law-gives-huge-tax-breaks-to-companies-who-hire-veterans/

Attention Veterans and Employers! The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, enacted in February of 2009, offers $4,800 to an employer for hiring a qualified veteran.  This legislation includes other key provisions – including giving businesses tax credits for hiring unemployed veterans and providing disabled veterans a payment of $250.  In addition, it includes other provisions to improve the lives of our troops and veterans, such as funding additional child care centers and warrior transition centers for wounded warriors returning from combat.

Improving the Quality of Life for Our Troops

• Renovating and Making More Energy-Efficient DOD Facilities:  Provides $4.2 billion to invest in energy efficient projects and to repair and modernize a variety of Department of Defense facilities.
• Improving the Hospitals for Our Troops: Provides $1.3 billion for rebuild and renovate our aging military hospitals and ambulatory care centers.  Many of these facilities are 40 or even 50 years old, and are not suited to current medical standards and practices.
• Providing Assistance to Military Homeowners: Provides $555 million for assistance to military homeowners, including wounded warriors and surviving spouses, who have been impacted by the housing crisis.
• Improving Troop and Family Housing:  Provides $335 million to build new barracks and dormitories for our soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen as well as to make further investments in quality family housing for military families.
• Expanding Child Care for Military Families:  Provides $240 million for new child development centers on military bases across the country.  These facilities will help military spouses hold down jobs and will provide employment opportunities for caregivers.
• Establishing Warrior Transition Complexes: Provides $100 million for warrior transition complexes to provide services to wounded warriors returning from combat and their families.
• Constructing Needed Facilities for the National Guard: Provides $100 million for new construction of operations and training facilities to support National Guard units across the country.

Improving the Quality of Life for Our Veterans

• Providing Businesses A Tax Credit for Hiring Unemployed Veterans: Provides a tax credit to businesses for hiring unemployed veterans.  Specifically, veterans would qualify if they were discharged or released from active duty from the Armed Forces during the previous five years and received unemployment benefits for more than 4 weeks before being hired.
• Providing Disabled Veterans A Payment of $250:  Provides a payment of $250 to all disabled veterans receiving benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.  (This $250 payment, which also goes to retirees, SSI beneficiaries and Railroad Retirement beneficiaries, is targeted to those who are likely not to benefit from the Making Work Pay tax credit.)
• Improving the Hospitals for Our Veterans:  Provides $1 billion for non-recurring maintenance, including energy efficiency projects, to address deficiencies and avoid serious maintenance problems at the 153 VA hospitals across the country.
• Increasing the Number of VA Claims Processors:  Provides $150 million for an increase in VA claims processing staff, in order to address the large backlog in processing veterans’ claims.  This backlog has been a key complaint of veterans across the country.
• Improving Automation of VA Benefit Processing:  Provides $50 million to improve the automation of the processing of veterans’ benefits, to get benefits out sooner and more accurately.
• Constructing Extended Care Facilities for Veterans: Provides $150 million for state grants for the construction of additional extended care facilities for veterans.

Article source: http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/legislation?id=0273#troopsandvets

By Griselda Nevarez, Cronkite News Service
Published at AZ Capital Times, February 16, 2010

American Legion posted February 3, 2010:

Earlier this week, President Obama signed into law the Veterans’ Emergency Fairness Act of 2009. This important legislation amends existing statutes to allow the VA to reimburse eligible veterans for portions of emergency treatment that are not covered by their private insurance. Before this change in law, VA could only pay outside hospitals directly, or reimburse veterans in cases where they did not have private health insurance.

“Many veterans enrolled in VA health care have limited private health insurance, and this new legislation helps to correct previous inequities in the law, and helps to ensure that a trip to the emergency room doesn’t cause financial ruin for those who honorably and selflessly served this nation,” said American Legion National Commander Clarence Hill.

“The American Legion appreciates Congress recognizing the need for this legislation and the president for acting quickly to sign it into law,” said Hill.

This legislation, introduced by Senator Daniel Akaka, D- Hawaii, also allows VA to reimburse veterans retroactively for emergency care received before the bill’s passage.