Military Officer - March 2009 - (Page 36) washingtonscene For those eligible to retire on or before Aug. 1, 2009, no additional service is required. I For those eligible for retirement after Aug. 1, 2009, and before July 1, 2010, one year of additional service is required. I For those eligible for retirement after Aug. 1, 2010, and before July 1, 2011, two years of additional service is required. I For those eligible for retirement after Aug. 1, 2011 and before July 1, 2012, three years of additional service is required. I VA Underpaid Widows Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) 11,000 survivors repaid so far. 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Central Standard Time. But that’s not the only problem here. Current law still requires DoD to recoup the final month’s military retired pay from military widows and then reissue them only a pro-rata check for the number of days the retiree was alive. MOAA says what’s good for the VA is good for DoD. We’ve been working with Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) to change the law to let military widows keep the final month of retired pay, and we’re pushing that hard this year. New military widows are traumatized enough without the added, insensitive shock of having the Pentagon reach into their bank accounts to recoup retired pay that often times already has been spent on housing, car payments, or other bills. F Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) or the past 12 years, the VA wrongfully has been recouping final disability and pension payments from widows of deceased veterans. Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, learned of the practice, which has been illegal for more than a decade, and confronted VA officials in December 2008. In 1996, Congress passed a law stipulating that disability and VA pension checks issued for the month of a veteran’s death shall be payable to the surviving spouse. Previously, the law called for recouping the final month’s pay and refunding only the pro-rata portion for the number of days of that month in which the veteran was alive. Astonishingly, the VA never updated the change to the pay system. In the wake of this revelation, former VA Secretary James Peake established a special task force to identify the cases involved and issue checks to the affected survivors by January. Surviving spouses who think they should be eligible but haven’t received a refund can contact the Survivors’ Call Center at (800) 749-8387, Monday through Friday, from DoD, VA Plan Data Exchange Joint health record system due by September. S ometimes it takes a little nudging to get government bureaucracies moving in the right direction at a pace faster than slow. For DoD and the VA, that not-so-subtle nudge came as the FY 2008 Defense Authorization Act, requiring a fully interoperable electronic health record system by Sept. 30, 2009, and establishing a joint interagency office to oversee implementation. The two departments have been sharing some data since 2001, but it took the new law to get serious leadership attention and action. Currently, data transfer exists in several forms, with only some of it on a real-time basis. For instance, readable electronic health information for wounded warriors includes x-rays, MRIs, allergies, and pharmaceutical history, and other viewable 36 MILITARY OFFICER MARCH 2009
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