Second Class Veteran Caregivers Suffer Thanks to Congress

We are second class caregivers for our families and apparently Congress has no problem with that at all. When the Caregivers Bill was passed, they ignored the fact that our families have done it a lot longer than the newer families. Hey, but why would they want to take care of us after they didn't all these years? Why help us and it right for the veterans we care for?

Our generation had to fight for everything available now when Vietnam veterans and families were treated like second class veterans by other groups. Yahoo, we managed to make it better for all veterans. Now Congress tips their hats to our families with a one finger salute.

Yesterday there was a memorial put up for our disabled veterans. It was not funded by the government. No shocker there. The memorial is for all veterans equally but Congress didn't care.

Expansion dim for VA caregiver program
Albuquerque Journal
By Tom Philpott
Syndicated Columnist
PUBLISHED: Monday, October 6, 2014

For older generations of spouses, mothers and other family caregivers of severely disabled veterans, the startling feature of the Family Caregiver Program that Congress enacted in 2010 was its exclusivity.

The unprecedented package of caregiver benefits includes training to help to ensure patient safety; cash stipends to partially compensate for caregiver time and effort; caregiver health coverage if they have none, and guaranteed periods of respite to protect against burnout.

The comprehensive package, however, isn’t available to most family members who are primary caregivers to severely ill and injured veterans.

To control costs, Congress opened the program only to caregivers of veterans severely “injured,” either physically or mentally, in the line of duty on or after Sept. 11, 2001. It is not open to families of severely disabled vets injured before 9/11. It also is not open to post-9/11 veterans who have severe service-connected illnesses, rather than injuries.

Advocates for these forgotten families had hoped a successful launch of a limited program would spur Congress to expand eligibility and end the obvious inequity it created. That hope is set back by a new Government Accountability Office report on the three-year-old Family Caregiver Program, which finds it’s underresourced and, for the most part, in disarray.

All of the research and the studies that Congress relied to shape the program, Atizado added, had focused on caregiver needs for the elderly, not for a younger generation of veterans struggling to re-engage with society.

Atizado noted that most caregivers of severely disabled veterans, including most represented by DAV, aren’t eligible for the comprehensive caregiver benefit, although they want to be and should be.
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