The Plethora of Benefits Available for Veterans and How to Submit Claims - Paul Lawrence

Paul Lawrence is a public sector vice president with Kaiser Associates. He helps government leaders address their challenges by developing and implementing unique solutions. He has researched and written extensively on management and government. He is the co-author of Succeeding as a Political Executive, 50 Insights from Experience, What Government Does, How Political Executives Manage, and Paths to Making a Difference, Leading in Government. He has testified before Congress and several state legislatures. He also is the author of Veterans Benefits for You, a guide to helping veterans get the resources they need. This is the CounterCulture Mom Show. I'm your host, Tina Griffin. We are honored to have you join us today as we honor our veterans this week. And I'm with Paul Lawrence, founder of Veterans Benefits for You. Paul, how are you doing today? Great, thanks. Good to be with you. And thanks so much for caring about our veterans. Absolutely. It's Veterans Day slash week slash month, year, and so forth. You and I wouldn't be here if we didn't have the freedoms we had because many veterans have fought in the front of the battle lines to give us our freedoms. Thank you for doing what you do because I know that a lot of people do not know the benefits they have if they are veterans, and you are going to fill in the gap here so people know what they have at their fingertips. How did you get involved with all this? Well, it's actually really interesting. I'm a veteran myself, so I served for three years to fulfill my ROTC requirement. Then I became a consultant. And in the last administration, I got to serve at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as the undersecretary for benefits. So I learned all about these benefits because I was in charge of administering them. And one of the things I heard all the time was, I didn't know I was eligible for benefits. There's so much I don't understand. How do I access them? So I wrote this book. So all the benefits are one place and they're easy to understand. Yeah, that's just absolutely fantastic. You did serve in the U.S. Army, attaining the rank of captain, way to go, captain. And you graduated from the Army's Airborne School and awarded the Meritorious Service Medal. How do you get that? You do good things. I don't know. I couldn't remember if you asked me to tell. The one thing I'm most proud of is going to Airborne School because that was something I really, really wanted to work through. How long were you in the U.S. Army? I was in three years. That's so cool. When did you go in, when you were right out of high school? No, no, no. This looks kind of a funny story. I delayed my, you know, the way ROTC works is you go to college, you get commissioned. I then went on to graduate school. So I delayed my commission for four more years while I went into graduate school. So I went after graduate school. That is so cool. And today you live just south of D.C., you were saying? That's right, right. I'm a Virginia resident, Virginia veteran. So cool. Okay, how does a veteran apply for benefits and how long does it take? Well, so there's a couple of, there's a wide range of benefits, but the one that tends to get the most attention is the biggest benefits. It's called disability compensation. You've been hurt or injured while you're in service and you get out and you apply for a monetary benefit to help you with expenses or other sort of quality of life things. So for example, might've gone to Airborne school, hurt your back. Now it bothers you all the time. Your knees might ache because you marched a lot, carry things. If you're a pilot, your neck, your hearing, these sort of things, right? So you have to have sort of three things. You have to demonstrate that something happened to you while you were in the service. Hopefully you've gone to the doctor as a result of some of the things that have happened to you. You have to demonstrate you were in the service. So you produce your documentation that yes, in fact, I was honorably discharged. This document shows it. And then you have to demonstrate that it bothers you now because obviously if you got well, you wouldn't be injured or disabled. Three things are essentially the basis of your application. Now, having said all that, the application is complicated. So you have to fill out lots of forms. It should go through in about three or four months. It's taken a little bit longer now, four to six months, because there are delays and things, but it takes a while. It can be very frustrating, but that's the process. And the trick is have all the documentation and get somebody who knows about the process to help you. And you can do that through no cost help from service officers, from your state, or from the Wounded Warrior Project, American Legion, these type organizations. Okay, why do you think, do they purposely make it difficult for veterans to get their hands on their benefits or have a long waiting period? That just drives me crazy. After all they've done for our country, they should be waiting about four minutes to get their hands on the benefits. This is a really good point, because I tell you what, I think about what happens when folks enlist. We say, go off and give us the world's best military. And when you come back, we should be saying, and we're going to give you the very best benefits in healthcare from the VA. Instead, we're pretty happy with it being average or below average, or you got to wait and you got to be frustrated. It takes a while because the process can be complicated, but it also takes a while because of good old bureaucracy, management inefficiencies, and just cause. So it was really frustrating. It's one of the things I worked on when I was in there. It's like, it's got to be faster. We know what veterans want exactly as you surmised. They want their benefits fast, they want them accurate, and they just don't really want to have to fight with everything all the time. Yeah, and they're burned out and then they feel unappreciative if that would happen as the case. That would just drive me crazy. So veterans, thank you for serving. That is two thumbs down to the speed of the US government. And it doesn't surprise me, they're just sad. It's almost like they don't want you to get your benefits. And that might be the case, who knows? Any thoughts on that? Well, yeah, they actually, there's sort of an urban legend. Oh, they get more points in heaven if they deny. That's really not true. But there's unfortunately not a lot of penalties for going slow. So that's kind of one of the problems. And there's really no consequence of saying yes to everybody because Congress allocates the money kind of like social security. It's there regardless of the budget. So it's all there. It's just a matter of getting the organization to work effectively. Yeah, I can see that. Unbelievable. Can all veterans earn the benefits you're talking about? And does it matter how old the veteran is to get those benefits? Yeah, so you can always come back. You're never too old. What really depends upon is like your discharge. You really need to get these benefits. You had to have served honorably. There's a couple of nuances in there that you can kind of finagle, but you really have to have served honorably. Technically, if you get a dishonorable discharge, you're not even a veteran. So it's kind of self-fulfilling. And what are some of the major benefits? Can you go over a couple of bullet points for veterans? What are they and are there a couple of websites they can go to to get their hands on these benefits? Yeah, so they're all on va.gov, the VA's website. But of course, you can buy my book. And part of what the frustration with the VA website is like incomprehensible points, right? It's like, I don't know where you live, but road signs in Northern Virginia are designed for people to know where they're going. It's the same kind of thing at these websites. If you know this process, you wouldn't need it. But there's really powerful benefits. And this actually really helps veterans get ahead of their civilian counterparts. So the GI Bill is the education benefits. Serve honorably for three years, and you get the equivalent of a four-year free ride at a state university, right? Four years of college, right? Now you can use it for many other things. A lot of folks don't go to college. You can use it for trades. You can use it for credentials. You can use it, it's a very powerful benefit. You can purchase a home at no money down. It's called the Home Loan Guarantee. So think about folks who had to save money for a down payment. If you're a veteran, you can jump over that process and begin immediately owning a home. That's a great benefit. If you struggle when you're older or under certain conditions and you fall on hard times, there's a needs-based benefit called pension. So when you see like an older veteran in the neighborhood and you wonder, I wonder if they're gonna be able to have the resources to continue here. There's something called the Veteran's Pension. They can do that. And one of the things important is about any benefit you can appeal. If you think you got a wrong decision from VA or you didn't get enough, you can appeal and there's a new process to work that way through. So you're never too old. You never, you know, hey, I was treated unfairly. You can appeal and you can always come back. In fact, one of the things we tell people is, especially with disability compensation, injuries get worse. So come back every three to five years to make sure your benefits are appropriate with your injury or the level of pain you might be enduring. Oh, that's really, really good. And we're gonna talk about that towards the end of the program as well. If you think you didn't get what you should have received. We're gonna be back after this short commercial break about the benefits that are available to veteran family members right after this. The following is a life-saving message brought to you by LifeVac. Hi, I'm Arthur Lee, CEO, inventor of the LifeVac. Did you know that over 30 children a day are rushed to the hospital due to a choking emergency? That's why it's imperative to have a LifeVac nearby. It's made in the USA. LifeVac is an emergency suction device that is patented, FDA registered, and has successfully saved over a thousand lives already. Hear it from a real life saver. 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You can find out the times we air by checking out our posts on Instagram under CounterCulture Mom, downloading our CounterCulture Mom app, or by going to counterculturemom.com. Don't miss an episode. Hey, Paul, during commercial break, you gave me some info on when the veteran passes, family members of that veteran get some benefits, and a lot of them probably don't even know that they can get their hands on these benefits. What are those benefits? Yeah, no, this is really a very important question because a lot of veterans don't apply for benefits. They come out of service. They say, no, I'm good. I don't need benefits, right? I didn't really hurt myself or the like, but they forget that if they do pass because of something that happened to them in service, their family could earn benefits, okay? So say you did in fact have some cancer or something you encountered during service. If you pass from that, your family can be eligible for a payment, a monthly tax-free payment. They could, under certain circumstances, and when I say family, not only the spouse, could be the kids. It can even be parents under certain circumstances. Wow. It can be eligible for education, go to school. They can purchase a home with no money down, like we discussed. They could even be eligible for a pension. It's called survivor pension under certain circumstances. So there's a whole series of benefits. So what I tell veterans all the time is, think about your family as you think about benefits. It isn't just you. And be aware, when you left, when you were 24, 26, whatever, you were in real good shape. But as you've gotten older, maybe you're not. Maybe those things were caused by your service. Unbelievable. Do the veterans need to fill out paperwork ahead of time for their family members before they pass? Or let's say a veteran dies and the family members just watching this program today found out, hang on a second, there's benefits to us, even though our dad or uncle died seven years ago. Tell us about the process of that. Is it too late if the veteran already passed or do they have to fill out paperwork ahead of time? Yeah, no, no, no. So it's never too late. The family members would have to fill out the paperwork. Okay, that's regardless of when the veteran passes, day one or day 10 years later. But here's really the point though. The veteran really, really should be telling their family about their benefits. Because the last thing you want to do is have the veteran pass. Now the family is grieving and now they found out, oh, I've got to go fill out these forms and deal with the world's largest bureaucracy. So they're grieving and now they're unhappy. This is a really bad combination. Whereas the very best practice is the veteran says, hello, I'm getting these benefits. If something happens to you, this is what's going to happen. These are the things you'll do. And here's my buddy over at the American Legion who's helped me fill out the forms. He's ready to help you. He or she is ready to help you if this should happen. So that's really the trick. And let's say they're not in that boat. Their family member veteran did pass. What website do they go to to get started with getting their benefits? Again, all this is available at the VA's website. It's called va.gov. And you just go in there and write there's no survivor benefits, stuff like that. They should be able to find it. Again, don't forget you can also get assistance from service officers, right? American Legion, DAV, VFW. They have folks who are trained to help veterans through the VA process or their family members. And they do this at no cost. So again, there's a lot of support out there to help veterans kind of go through this process. This is just excellent. For people tuning in via radio, you're going to want to watch this episode. It's va.gov. Explore VA benefits and healthcare of healthcare, disability, education and training, careers and employment, pension, housing assistance, burials and memorials, records, family member benefits. A lot right here at va.gov. Didn't even know that this website existed, Paul. Thank you for pointing us in that direction. That's just fantastic. What are the recent changes in the education benefits such as that GI Bill? Well, a couple of things. A few years ago, they expanded the benefits so that it will last your lifetime. It used to be once you got out of service, you had 15 years to use the GI Bill. And so a lot of people timed out from that, okay? The other thing is like how folks are consuming education is changing, right? So you can use it for get an extra year if you're doing STEM, science, technology, engineering, math, you get an extra year of that. There's some new high-tech apprenticeships. They'll finance you while you go and learn how to be a Microsoft trained engineer, things like that. And again, the thing about credentials, right? Imagine this day and age getting a credential that says you are qualified at things like cybersecurity or program management. So even if you've gone to college already and you didn't take advantage of it, you can come back and really augment your place at promotion time, as well as in the job market by understanding how powerful this benefit is. That's fantastic. I think one of the things that breaks my heart and I would see this a lot when I lived in Hollywood is a lot of veterans are homeless. They're on the street, they're holding up a sign. What can we do personally to help our homeless veterans here in America? Sure, this is really important thing. This is just tragic as you say, and is ironic because the VA has lots of money and programs for homeless veterans. So let me start by giving you this number. Let's be brutally tactical. If you see that sign like you just had in your thing, call this number, 877-424-3838. I'll say it again, 877-424-3838. This is the VA's homeless veteran hotline. Call this number and said, I've seen that guy in your song. I've seen that guy at the corner of 1st and Main Street. They're supposed to come out and check whether he or she is a veteran and enroll them in programs, okay? So one of the real important thing is connect these people to the VA. They have programs and the like. And quite frankly, it doesn't even have to be when they end up in that situation. If you have a friend or a buddy, who's like, I'm on the cusp of being homeless, you can call for them and get them resources so you prevent them from being homeless. So it's really important that we find these people and get them connected to the VA. Wow, I never even knew that the VA did so many things that you're talking about. And it really helps connect the dots because the VA can help the people that are on the street, the veterans that are on the street that served our country. The people living as homeless, they probably don't even know that they can get the benefits from the VA. Right, well, that's part of why someone could call for them. Wow. And I know once a year, we would do something called the point in time count where you travel to these major cities and try to find homeless veterans to figure out what the resources are. But yeah, and as you know, many of them struggle from healthcare issues. So you can get them into VA, not only get them some money, but also get them housed and get them healthcare as well. So it really is a problem. It's just a shame that it's taken off like it has. How many homeless veterans do you think we have in America? Well, when they do this count, I would refer you to, they say it's somewhere between 35 and 40,000. Wow. But I always worry about those counts. You just never know. And of course, they would say one is too many. I understand that, but there's lots of resources. So I think the challenge is really to get these folks connected with the resources. Absolutely. Are there any other benefits that veterans might not know if they could get their hands on? Let's see. Well, there's insurance. So for example, there's a special, VA runs a special insurance program. And often if you are disabled, you can't get insurance. So these are really good. There's life insurance, there's mortgage insurance, things like that worth checking out. It's a very safe portfolio. Prices tend to be a little bit low. One of the complaints is the amount of insurance you can get through these programs is often not large enough. But if you can't get insurance because of your situation, that's available. The pension is really good. That's the one, the needs-based thing. The other thing is really important to think about is if the veteran is unable to take care of him or herself, VA will assign a fiduciary. So for example, you're elderly, you're eligible for a pension, but now we determined that, hey, maybe you can't take care of your finances like you used to, someone can do that for them. So VA will assign a fiduciary. So they're really designed to help veterans when they maybe can't help themselves. That's fantastic. All right, Paul, you've given us a ton of tips. When we come back, we're gonna talk in detail about that book of yours, because that is like a bullet point form with all the benefits. You just basically hit the tip of the iceberg here. There's so many more benefits in that book. It's loaded. We're gonna talk about that and what a veteran can do if they aren't satisfied with a decision about their benefits right after this. I came in as a boy and I'm leaving as a young man. 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Throughout history, gold has been the answer to rising inflation, a weakening dollar and a hedge against the stock market. Visit LegacyPMInvestments.com to open your account today. Centuries of security with modern day convenience. What can a veteran do if they aren't satisfied with the decision about their benefits? And can you give us an example of what that would be? Sure, so you apply for disability compensation and the way they do this is they do this in percentages, zero to 100% and that translates into how much money. To be 100% service connected is about $4,000 tax free every month, so that's, you know, that's it. And you say, hey, you know, I thought I was a much higher percentage, I got a lower percentage. I got 20%, I thought it was before your 50% or I got denied. Yeah, I think that's something wrong, okay? It's really interesting because this process used to be, the appeals process used to be really onerous. You used to have to go before a judge and take three to seven years and everybody hated it and everybody was miserable. So in 2017 and 18, a new process was started and you have a couple other options. So you can appeal this way and let me explain it to you. You can come in and say, hey, I want what's called a higher level review. This is kind of like the NFL, a more senior experience looks at it, a person looks at it and says, hey, I think they made a mistake and you can even tell them where you think they made the mistake. That'll get done in about three or four months. You can do something, one other thing called a supplemental claim. You can say, okay, you didn't see the stuff on my knee, I'm gonna give you additional evidence on my knee to prove to you I deserve more. So, and you can do this not only for the disability compensation I described, but you can appeal any decision VA makes about your healthcare, about just about anything, there's a process to do that. So it's somewhat unique in terms of all the federal agencies you cannot appeal to the IRS, that's your tax bills. That doesn't work, okay? But VA, yeah. Don't get me started on the IRS, man, that's all I gotta say, unbelievable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, more corruption, the deeper we go. So Paul, do you think that most of the cases you've seen come through that people are filing with the VA are approved, or are more cases going through where they're purposely being difficult? Is it only like a few? So the vast majority of, let's say disability compensation, you apply for disability compensation, everybody gets the GI Bill if you're eligible, everybody gets the HOMO if you're eligible. Disability compensation is where a decision is really made. 75% of those claims were approved when I was there. So the vast majority approved. And the trick to getting it approved is having a completed claim. If you can demonstrate, I did get hurt, here's the evidence, I was in service, here's the evidence, it does hurt me now, here's the evidence, people want to approve that. It's when the claims are incomplete, it gets squirrely, and that's where problems happen. Okay, that makes sense. Now you have a phenomenal book, Veteran Benefits For You, For The Veteran In Your Life, and next time you meet a veteran, people, don't forget to thank them for fighting for your freedoms. Paul, tell us more about this book, what's in it, and what are we gonna learn, and what can we do with it? Sure, it's all about your benefits, called Veterans Benefits For You, as you pointed out and have on the screen, okay? About 225 pages, and what I want to do is write a book. All the benefits in one place, you have to buy multiple books and easy to read language. You know, we all love lawyers, but too often they write books nobody can understand. This is written as I had to explain it when I was in office. I'd go to town halls where people would stand up, and I had to explain, no, this is how this works, let me explain the process, let me show you where the forms are, let me even offer in the appendices how to get help at no cost, okay? So it's pretty much all there, should be for you, your family, and even that, you know, the older veterans in your life who, just as you pointed out, they didn't come, they didn't access it, maybe they came back during the Vietnam period, we know how hard that was, and they're wondering, well, is it too late? The answer's no. Paul, thank you for your hard work and determination, all the blood, sweat, and tears, because a lot of veterans can now get the benefits they need and want, and also their family members. Thank you for making a difference. Everybody out there, share these episodes, because everyone knows a veteran. Go to counterculturemom.com, click on the show links, the show tabs surrounding each and every episode to get your hands on these resources. Paul, go get them, thank you so much for being on our Veterans Theme of the Week.