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CITYVIEWMAG.COM JULY AUGUST 2015
Warrior Care:
Benets Available to America’s Aging Veterans Story by Mark Spurlock
IN 2007, AT THE BEGINNING of the Iraq War “troop surge,” the Washington Post pre- sented a damning special report on Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Army’s flagship hospital from 1909
to its closure in 2011. The report described a shameful litany of filth, neglected patients, and unresponsive bureaucracy that contrasted with public perception of the facility as a 113-acre surgical “crown jewel of military medicine.”
Last year, the Department of Veterans Affairs endured a similar embarrassment as several
of its offices were discovered to have left patients needing care untreated for months and even years. Dozens of veterans died in both Virginia and Arizona, and many VA officials were shown to have cooked their books and in some cases received bonuses or other perfor- mance-based incentives while the veterans they were supposed to care for languished.
At Tennessee’s VA Alvin C. York Medical Center in Murfreesboro in 2009, almost 6,400 veterans were deemed at risk for hepatitis because of poor disinfecting procedures during colonoscopies. Ninety-two of the veter- ans subsequently tested positive.
As CNN reported in its 2014 coverage: “Scandal, controversy, and veterans care in the United States have gone hand- in-hand for virtually as long as there’s been a republic.” Despite government promises and the recurring invocation of politicians of both parties to “support the troops,” when those promises come
due, veterans can often find them to be little more than empty words. Neverthe- less, aging veterans and their surviving spouses do have many benefits available to them—if they know how to apply. Here, Cityview informs Tennessee’s more than half a million veterans (of whom about 375,000 served our nation during wartime) and their loved ones of some of the many promises they are owed.
Pension For Non-Service–Connected Disability
Most benefits for veterans are described in U.S. Code Title 38, Part II. Chapter 15 outlines the Non-Service–
Connected Disability Pension that is designed to provide qualified veterans and their surviving spouses with a tax- free monthly pension to help defray the cost of long-term care.
Albert Stout, an associate with Ran- dall Baxter Associates and a volunteer with U.S. Senior Vets (a nonprofit that helps guide seniors through the pen- sion-application process; usseniorvets. com), describes how the benefit works: “For anyone who served during war- time (or their spouse) and who needs help with long-term care, this pension can help pay the cost.”