News From the Cause
VA insists benefits will cover caregivers of vets with TBI (STARS & STRIPES)
March 15, 2011
WASHINGTON — Veterans Affairs officials promised Friday that traumatic brain injury victims will be covered under new caregiver benefits scheduled to start this summer, but veterans advocates remain skeptical.
“It still seems like there are so many things they don’t understand about what the care needs are for these veterans,” said Sarah Wade, the wife of an Iraq War veteran who suffered TBI in a roadside bomb blast.
In testimony before the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Veterans Health Administration Undersecretary Robert Petzel said that “large numbers of TBI patients will be eligible” when the final benefits rules go into effect later this year. He anticipates the program will launch by June, although he acknowledged the program is already well behind its original January 2011 start date.
The caregiver program, passed by Congress last year, is designed to give financial support and training tools to at-home caregivers of wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Veterans groups hailed is passage last year as a way to help both the injured troops and their families, many of whom have left their jobs to care for their loved ones full time.
But when draft regulations were released earlier this year, those same groups bristled at what they saw as narrow definitions of which troops and caregivers would be eligible.
VA officials blamed the complexity of the new program on the conflict, and said he anticipates troops who suffered varying levels of traumatic brain injury to be eligible under the rules. Click here to view more
