Military Tuition Assistance For Dependents - Veterans may be required to repay money they receive in part because of agency personnel's negligence in improperly processing education benefits.
The VA OIG recently released a report on the agency's overpayments to veterans totaling $4.5 million over the past two years. The IG found that most of the overpayments were the result of careless VA employees not checking email Most employees are not even aware of the need to check incoming emails for more benefits
Military Tuition Assistance For Dependents
The background of benefits relates to veterans receiving the Dependent Educational Assistance (DEA) program and 100 percent permanent and full service connection. Dependents of these veterans are eligible for college education Its benefits include the famous G.E. Virginia's second largest educational program after Bill
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Generally, veterans receiving 100% cannot receive payments for their dependents at the same time, up to about $250 a month during college, if those dependents receive DEA benefits.
A computer glitch hasn't prevented double payments in the past two years And agency staff didn't check their email, which may have contained notifications to help stop double payments.
Currently eligible veterans are paid an average of $3,400 more. These veterans could theoretically be required to repay amounts despite VA's negligence in processing overpayments that veterans should have known they were receiving more cash benefits for.
It sounds simple enough, but most veterans probably don't understand how this benefit works with regular monthly disability compensation. So they would not have noticed the overpayment for two years and now they can claim the refund
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For affected veterans, be sure to file an overpayment dispute if you believe the charge is false. Even if the money was paid to you in error, you may also consider filing a waiver request because the VA was negligent.
Duplicated payment due to delay in processing DEA related compensation corrections The OIG estimated that in the 2017 school year, 1,300 of the 1,900 veterans (70 percent) received supplemental school benefits while their dependents received DEA benefits. This resulted in approximately $4.5 million in overpayments as of February 1, 2018. If VBA employees continue to delay processing DEA-related compensation payments, approximately $22.5 million in improper payments could occur over five years. These overpayments must be repaid by these veterans
OIG found that VBA's Office of Field Operations (OFO) and Compensation Services did not have a timely standard for processing DEA-related compensation adjustments. The OIG has determined that 90 days is a reasonable time for a VSR to complete a DEA-related compensation adjustment after a VAR receives a dependent DEA benefit after receiving the VARO notice.
The OIG found that recurring payments occurred in three adjustment statuses—established, pending, or not completed OIG Assessment:
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Based on these findings, the OIG examined all 58 VARO's DEA program mailboxes and found that, as of May 7, 2018, there were approximately 3,100 unread DEA notification emails from 25 of them VCEs. The remaining 33 VAROs had no read DEA Email notifications All of these unread emails likely require DEA-related offset benefit adjustments and therefore an uncertain amount of benefit duplication and overpayment amounts.
The OIG determined that during the 2017 school year, VCEs generally properly administered DEA benefit payments. VCEs correctly calculated payments for about 16,500 new DEA member claims (97 percent). The OIG identified five calculation errors that resulted in incorrect payment amounts for training periods and incorrect final payment dates in the electronic claims processing system. As a result of these errors, VCE incorrectly paid participants $1,606, which is about 0.18 percent of the total payment.
The OIG determined that a number of factors contributed to delays in the DEA-related compensation adjustment process These factors include lack of mailbox management at VARO and other regional and national levels; ineffective notification process; And the system lacks functionality to flag cases of duplication of benefits In addition, the NWQ's work sharing rules duplicate benefits processes when they are ready for processing
Some VARO DEA email accounts did not check for notifications from the VCE that the Veteran Supplemental Assistant was being terminated. The OIG determined that VBA does not have specific requirements or timeliness standards for mailbox inspections OIG interviewed Veterans Service Center managers and the VARO director responsible for DEA mailbox oversight and determined that each level of oversight failed to effectively monitor mailboxes. For example, the manager of the VARO Veterans Services Center in Oakland, California, stated that the mailbox had been out of control for three years due to leadership changes and a lack of redistribution of duties.
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OFO VBA's Oversight Management Analyst stated that there is no national monitoring procedure for DEA mailboxes. Although OFO and Compensation Services personnel periodically visit each VARO, no protocol has been established to inspect DEA mailboxes. According to the same analyst, this is because visiting the site may not actually include checking every aspect of the VBA tutorial.
VBA did not have an electronic system for identifying cases of potential duplication of benefits, and an outdated and ineffective email notification system was used to identify such cases. According to management and staff interviewed by OIG, one solution could be to add a Veterans Benefits Management System notice to adjust DEA-related compensation payments when VCEs issue DEA benefits to dependents.
Work-sharing rules at NWQ contributed to higher pay benefits The NWQ is a rules-based work allocation tool that distributes VARO cases across the country on a daily basis based on staffing capacity, national claims priorities, and special missions. VA has designated priority cases, which receive a higher priority than non-priority cases, when they are ready for further action. Priority cases include those who are homeless, terminally ill, seriously injured veterans, former POWs, Medal of Honor recipients, people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, those experiencing financial hardship or those over 85 years of age. According to NWQ's associate director, DEA-related compensation reform is not a priority The Deputy Director of NWQ explained how NWQ assigns non-priority cases as soon as they are ready for further action if there is sufficient VARO capacity to assign them. If unavailable, NWQ does not immediately assign cases when they are ready for processing, even if these cases are at risk of overpaying veterans. DEA-related compensation adjustments remain at NWQ, pending assignment to VARO to cancel student support, plus overpayments.
Finally, the OIG interviewed VCEs, RPOs, and educators to determine the cause of these errors regarding the small number of erroneous DEA benefit payments. These errors were reported as VCEs rushed to fill applications to meet increased RPO performance requirements Further, the Education Service pointed out that these errors were clerical errors committed by the VCE The OIG determined that the number of errors in new DEA benefit claims was not significant enough to predict the total claim population Therefore, the OIG has not recommended improvements in this area
Military Spouse And Family Educational Assistance Programs
The Deputy Minister agreed with all the recommendations. Counsel for Beneficiary presented acceptable action plans for all five recommendations The OIG will monitor VBA's progress and investigate the implementation of the recommendations until all recommended actions have been completed.
He received his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and his law degree from the University of Minnesota from the VA Veteran Readiness and Employment Program.
He is regularly featured as a Veterans Affairs policy expert in national publications, including Bloomberg News, Foreign Policy Magazine, The Washington Times, Fox News, CBS, NBC, Star Tribune and others.
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