I have attempted to try and live my life according to the American dream, I graduated high school, I enlisted in the Army during the Vietnam War. Since my entire family had served in the Army since 1776 it was just part of growing up, we were going in the Army bone way or another.
I took college classes while in the Army and after my ETS (end time service) I used my GI Bill benefits while working full time at an aircraft factory on the night shift to attend classes during the day as they paid my tuition, books and provided about 500 a month to help with my bills, as I was married with 2 small daughters.It all helped. But in April 1984 I was sent a letter from the Postal Service that my name was on top of the hire list and I needed to report for a physical and interview, my test scores of 99.5 plus my 5 points for veterans preference put me in the first group of new hires. I became one of the 700,000 employees that had a good middle class job with great benefits for myself and my family.
I stayed with my military duty by enlisting in the Army National Guard for the 2 weeks of annual training and a week end a month so that when I reached age 60 I would obtain retirement benefits and I would not just lose the years of active duty I had spent from October 1973 - September 1982, so when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, I was one of the National Guardsman called to active duty for the first Gulf War.
There were setbacks along the way, I lost a pizza store I had opened in 1988 and my ex wife was not capable of keeping it going while I was on active duty so when I returned from GW1, I found myself in bankruptcy, she thought advertising with ADVO was a waste of money. She rapidly dropped sales over 2,000 a week. When you lose 8,000 a month out of a 35,000 a month business you have issues. We got past that part of life and a year later my son was born, 9 months after I returned from Desert Storm, so there was a lot of good that came from that war.
As you mostly all know I ended up becoming totally disabled caused by military service and am rated at 100% P&T by the VA and am also on SSD and have been since June 2002, I was 46 at the time and had been dealing with medical issues since Feb 1992 when I suffered my stroke and April 1992 when I had the first heart attack requiring surgery.
Due to my persistence in dealing with the Veterans Administration they finally service connected my PTSD and cardiac issues as being caused by my service which entitled my family to some very nice benefits, medical care through CHAMPVA, educational benefits for my children, tax breaks on my home and vehicles from my home state (these benefits vary from state to state, so each veteran has to learn about their benefits from their states veteran agency.
The VA has paid for many trips to ERs and long stays in ICU units due to Congestive heart failure, in September they paid to have a biventricular pacemaker/defibillator implanted at a local civilian hospital as they had no VA doctors experienced to do the same type of surgery.
They have installed wheel chair ramps and other safety and medical devices to aid in my care at home, I really could NOT ask for better care from the VA Healthcare program, however their Veteran Benefits program leaves a lot to be desired, and this half of the agency causes many veterans to be unhappy with the VA.
Like many of you, the equity in our home evaporated and we are unable to refinance and get the new interest rates close to 4% and we are stuck with a 6.5% rate. We would much rather have a 900 a month payment versus the current 1165 a month. Luckily we live in an area of the nation where housing prices have fluctuated drastically as the homes in Las Vegas, Miami, Los Angeles, and the San Bernadino/Riverside area our home has not falling in price nothing like these areas.
I also have had many family members move in with us over the past year due to not being able to find work, my brother, my wife's cousin who was waiting on a decision from Social Security and a divorced daughter who brought 2 of our grand children with her. Charity begins at home and we have been as generous as we possibly can, we won't close our doors to family, we feel that we have been fortunate.
We now exist on government benefits some call them entitlements programs, I was told they were earned benefits, the VA benefit checks are due to service connected injuries and the SSD check is from the insurance payments I have paid into the SS system my entire working life, there are 3 portions we all pay into, medicare, SS and SSD, not all will become eligible for SSD but if you become disabled for a year or more then due to the insurance payments we pay we become eligible for SSD benefits if the SS agency determines you to be disabled. They have a few type of review plans a 3 year plan for people they expect to improve and then the 7 year review plan for people like me who have medical issues that are not expected to improve to a point where you can return to any type of employment. I am not on welfare I have earned every penny I receive from the government, I would gladly trade these checks to get my health back, most disabled people I know, either thru SSD or the VA would be happy to return to work, the majority of us had jobs with benefits that were more generous than we now receive.
Myself I was working at the Postal Service as a T6 Letter Carrier which with over time meant I averaged between 70-80,000 a year, needless to say, I get nowhere near that amount in current benefits. I also can not do any of things in retirement that I had envisioned, like traveling, camping etc, now it is doctor appointments, surgery and ICU units, power chairs and oxygen tanks and a hospital bed in my living room.
My window to the world is this computer and most of my "friends" I have never "met" in person, I know then as names on Daily Kos, Hadit.com and the VBN network where I work with other veterans in their attempts to obtain their benefits from their local VA Regional Offices and if needed to refer them to lawyers that are trained in VA law and are more than likely to help them obtain the benefits they are entitled to by law. This law has not always been available to this nations veterans until June 2007 we were denied the right to legal representatives until our compensation claims had been denied by the BVA level and our claims next appeal level was the Court of Veteran Appeals (COVA) in June 2007 the VA changed the rules to allow us to get lawyers involved after the initial denial of a claim at the VARO level which has meant it is now possible to cut years if not decades off of the "hamster wheel" of the VA claim system.