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VA Cuts D-Day Veteran’s Benefits to $6 a Month

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Photo Credit: WNYTAn 89-year-old Navy veteran who came under heavy enemy fire aboard a landing craft on D-Day is accusing bureaucrats at the Department of Veterans Affairs of slashing his veterans benefits to $6 a month from $300.

Joseph Teson, of Watervliet, N.Y., told WNYT-TV he used to get $300 a month in benefits, about a third of which he would donate to veterans groups. He said the VA cut his benefits to recoup an overpayment of more than $3,000 that he never even noticed.

“I don’t know how they did it, but they did it,” Teson, 89, told the Albany station Saturday. “I didn’t say nothing. I just let it go. Everybody else complained but me.”

Teson was notified of the overpayment last year. The VA sent him a letter saying his “entitlement to compensation and pension benefits had changed,” resulting in an overpayment to him of $3,090.

“Since you are currently receiving VA benefits, we plan to withhold those benefits until the amount you were overpaid is recouped,” the VA said in a letter dated June 9, 2013, according to WNYT.

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Photo Credit: APVA Expands Veterans’ Access to Outside Medical Care, In Effort to Clear Long Waits

The Obama administration said Saturday it will allow more veterans to get health care outside Veterans Affairs facilities, following recent revelations about long waits for treatment and purported secret lists that hid backlogs.

The statement was issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which said the plan is to expand capacity at VA facilities to increase care, or when not possible increase care in the community through outside facilities.

Officials said VA Secretary Eric Shinseki put the plan into action following President Obama’s national TV address Wednesday on the issue and that it was being implemented by Friday under the direction of the Veterans Health Administration.

“VA has redoubled efforts to provide quality care to veterans and has taken steps at national and local levels to ensure timely access to care,” the department said Saturday in a statement.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers have pressed for the policy change as the VA confronts the allegations about employees falsifying appointment records to cover up delays in care and about veterans dying while awaiting treatment at VA centers.

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VA spends almost $100k on coffee break at Florida conference

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The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $90,747 on coffee and refreshments during morning and afternoon breaks at a pair of training conferences in Orlando last year.

These are the same conferences where the $52,000 video parody of the movie Patton – paid for with taxpayer dollars – was first screened. The total cost of the two VA get-togethers held in July and August 2011 at the Marriott World Center in Orlando was about $5.3 million.

The coffee klatches were needed to carry participants between their regular meals, which tallied $98,189 for four days of catering, and their “morning and evening refreshments,” which came with a price tag of almost $185,000.

At least the VA employees were not famished when they arrived at Karaoke Night, which cost $862.

The new numbers come from the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, which has been pressing the VA for spending details related to the human resources training conferences since it learned earlier this month that whistleblower tips led to an investigation by the agency’s inspector general.

Read more from this story HERE.