If you are an eligible wartime service veteran, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will pay a pension to help defray long-term care costs. When you combine this VA pension with your social security, you will be able to afford 83% of the cost of assisted living. The pension is called Aid and Attendance and is often the best kept secret on how to pay for long-term care. I talk to vets or their families every day about this life changing pension and get remarks like “nobody ever told me about this” or “How do I get the money?” or “We just spent over $100,000 on assisted living for dad and never heard about this!”

Here is how the math works:

The 2010 Metlife Market Survey of long-term care costs has shown that the average cost of an assisted living private room is $3,293/month. This is a 5% increase over last year’s average of $3,131/month.

The 2010 census reported the average check for all Social Security beneficiaries was $ 1,073/month.

For eligible veterans, the VA will pay an Aid and Attendance pension that equals up to  $1,644/month. Adding $1,073 plus $1,644 equals $2,717.

$2,717 is 83% of the 2010 assisted living cost of $3,293. Only 17% of the costs of assisted living will need to come out of the veteran’s savings.

To be eligible, the veteran should have served in wartime, on active duty for 90 days, with at least one day during a declared war, and honorably discharged. A general rule of thumb is that the vet should have less than $80,000 in assets (cash, CDs, etc) not counting first home and car. The veteran’s doctor needs to document that the vet needs assisted living (assistance with bathing, dressing, etc). To get the full amount of the pension, the veteran’s medical expenses such as assisted living costs need to be greater than or equal to income sources such as social security.  Assisted living costs alone usually make medical expenses greater than income.

What about other costs like the cost of prescription medication? There is more good news. Veterans who receive the Aid and Attendance pension can also receive free prescription medication, incontinence supplies, and even hearing aids when needed.

Joseph Scott McCarthy is the author of Checks for Vets, a guidebook to help wartime service veterans and their surviving spouses receive VA pensions to pay for long-term care. www.ChecksForVets.com. Joe can be reached at 877-249-8387 toll free.

The VA is also addressing the waiting time for retroactive payment of pensions once the forms are complete. The VA is now using an optional process called Fully Developed Claims. The goal is to process claims within 90 days of receipt. A claim is considered fully developed when the claimant has provided a DD-214 discharge record, all medical and financial supporting documents, and requires no additional VA assistance except for obtaining federal records. The fully developed claim process was piloted in 10 cities as a result of the Veterans Benefit Improvement Act of 2008 and is now available all over the country. You must use the new form 21-527EZ and attach all documents needed to support the claim when filing a Fully Developed Claim with the VA. The new forms are 4 pages long with 3 pages of instructions which is a substantial reduction from the previous forms. Examples of supporting documents include a certified copy of the veteran’s discharge record, proof of income and medical expenses, and proof of net worth (assets such as CDs, cash, and saving accounts). Failure to provide the support documents will put the claim into the standard claim process that could easily double the wait period. This new process will be welcome news for those veterans who have minimal savings and are waiting for the pension to be approved while they are paying for long-term care.

It is not known if form 21-534, used for pension submission for surviving spouses, will have a Fully Developed Claim option available in the future.

Joseph Scott McCarthy is the author of  Checks for Vets, a guidebook to help wartime service veterans and their surviving spouses receive VA pensions to pay for long-term care. His website is www.checksforvets.com

Available at on-line booksellers and Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

Joe can be reached at info@checksforvets.com or 877-249-8387

My name is Joseph Scott McCarthy. I am the author of a new book, Checks for Vets, a Guidebook to Help Wartime Service Veterans and their Surviving Spouses Receive VA Pensions to Pay for Long-Term Care. For more than eight years, I have helped veterans and surviving spouses learn about this pension through speaking engagements, newspaper articles, and personally assisting veterans and their surviving spouses moving-in to assisted living communities and utilizing nonmedical home care. It took more than four years of research and editing revisions to develop the book. It is an all-in-one book that allows the reader to get their hands around the complicated process of locating documents and completing forms to file a claim for an Aid and Attendance pension or Housebound pension. I am still amazed to learn in my everyday dealings with veterans that they are unaware this program exists.

My goal in writing Checks for Vets was to:

1. Get the word out to wartime service veterans and their surviving spouses that there is pension money available for them in their retirement years to help them with activities of daily living (bathing, dressing, etc).
2. Provide an all-in-one resource book for filing a claim for an Aid and Attendance pension or Housebound pension to eliminate the need to search multiple locations for information.
3. Save veterans time, and thus money, in speeding up the filing process by explaining the often complicated forms needed to file a claim.
4. Help the veteran service officers (VSOs) review more claims by educating wartime service vets and their surviving spouses on how to submit error-free pension applications to the VSOs.
5. Encourage people to become veteran advocates and use Checks for Vets to inform others about veteran pension benefits.

The goal of the blog is to:

1. Provide a forum to discuss newsworthy articles on Aid and Attendance and Housebound pensions.
2. Update VA pension information when it becomes available to complement the Checks for Vets resource book.
3. Offer an opportunity for veterans, their surviving spouses, and their family members to share success stories and comments on how VA pensions have changed their lives for the better and allowed a dignified retirement experience.

Recognize veterans every day you see them and thank them for their service. Ask them if they know about the pension they earned possibly decades ago that can change their lives if they need long-term care.  This is a critically important time of their lives when many are disabled, often alone, and too proud to ask for financial help.

Joseph S. McCarthy