Pvt Charles J Shutt Detachment VAVS

House Democratic leaders unveiled a plan late Thursday to provide a temporary increase in retired pay for about 30,000 people whose military careers were cut short by severe service-connected disabilities.

For 22 months — from Jan. 1, 2011, until Sept. 30, 2012 — people with fewer than 20 years of service who are receiving military disability retired pay for service-connected disabilities rated by the Veterans Affairs Department at 100 percent would be allowed to receive full veterans’ disability and military retired pay.

Also eligible would be people who are formally rated as 90 percent disabled but are considered fully disabled because their injuries prevent them from holding a job.

An omnibus veterans bill passed late Wednesday by the Senate includes the promise of retroactive insurance payments to about 2,500 severely injured service members.If the bill, S 728, becomes law, payments are expected to average $68,700 for the veterans who suffered a noncombat injury between Oct. 7, 2001, and Nov. 30, 2005, a period when Traumatic Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance, known as TSGLI, applied only to those injured in the combat theater.

Faced with a rise in suicides among Marines, the service is ordering training for all immediate supervisors — sergeants and corporals — to become more involved and knowledgeable about the intimate details of the lives of their young charges.

VA’s Benefits Delivery at Discharge - "BDD" - program has gone paperless. The program, which allows service members to apply for disability compensation benefits from VA before retiring or separating, has a goal of providing benefits within 60 days after release or discharge from active duty.

The Fourth National Summit on Women
Veterans' Issues will take place at the Westin Washington, D.C., City
Center from June 20-22. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B.
Peake said the three-day meeting will help ensure that women veterans
know about the benefits and health care they have earned.

"With more women than ever serving in our armed forces, this public
forum will bring visibility to the issues important to women veterans of
all eras," Peake said. "Today, women are important contributors to the
military and valued members of the veterans community."

More than 450 disabled veterans,
including nearly 120 recently injured during Operation Iraqi Freedom and
Operation Enduring Freedom (OIF/OEF), will ski the Rocky Mountains at
the 22nd National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic in Snowmass
Village, March 30 - April 4, 2008.

"Each year this Clinic enhances the physical, social, and emotional