Military Officer - October 2006 - (Page 29) washingtonscene Payback Time DoD and the VA reach agreement on retroactive payments owed to thousands of disabled retirees. Some recipients may begin receiving back payments as early as October. L E G I S L AT I V E N E W S T H AT A F F E C T S Y O U A establishes a retroactive effective date, s this column went to the VA does not initially make retroacpress, sources at DoD tive payments for those retirees with and the VA confirmed to MOAA that some disabled less than a 100-percent disability rating. That’s because there’s usually at least retirees due retroactive some offset required for retired military pay could start to see payments in midpay already received. October if all goes as planned. A small If the VA paid all retroacnumber could even see tive awards immediately, it payments before that. would cause major headHowever, if any unexThe VA aches for many disabled repected glitches crop up, needs a tirees, who then would have the payments will be delayed until the second half ton of data to pay back large amounts of their military retired pay. of January. That’s because from DoD Only if and when a disthe two agencies have in order to abled retiree is awarded their hands full at the end calculate CRDP or CRSC can the VA of the year reprogramming and implementing new how much find out whether back disability pay is due — but it pay rates for 2007. back and needs a ton of data from More than 100,000 redisability DoD to calculate how much. tirees now drawing either pay is due. On the other hand, retircombat-related special ees who have applied for and compensation (CRSC) already received increases or concurrent retirement in their VA disability awards and disability pay (CRDP) also might be due retroactive CRSC/CRDP ultimately will receive back payments payments from DoD. The bottom line is — and that number is growing daily that the new and complicated CRSC and with new awards. Because of the comCRDP programs have created major adplexity of calculating who is due how ministrative and budgetary headaches for much (individual circumstances vary Pentagon and VA administrators. widely, and many cases require manual Their first priority has been to begin review), the majority of payments likely issuing payments while minimizing will be phased in from January through confusion and aggravation for disabled next summer. retirees. Now, they’ve invested months of Why is retroactive pay due? Although combined effort to change their policies, the VA disability award letter usually OCTOBER 2006 Who’s Eligible for Back Pay? ■ Retroactive payments are due to about half of those drawing combatrelated special compensation or concurrent retirement and disability pay. Unfortunately, most won’t see payments until 2007. MILITARY OFFICER 29
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