Relocation scammers get slap on wrist

The acting principal deputy undersecretary for benefits at the Department of Veterans Affairs has been suspended for 15 days for letting two of his underlings work the system. The two had forced others to move and transfer to different jobs and then grabbed the newly vacated posts for themselves.

For this he only gets a 15-day wrist slap?!

Adding to the debacle was that the VA's Office of the Inspector General had unearthed over 20 hefty relocation-scam cases wherein senior executives were relocated to new positions and given fat raises during a time when others were blocked from salary increases. The new deputy replaced the one who'd had to retire after all the allegations came out, so he should have known exactly what was going on and stopped it.

The official bio for the new acting deputy says that he's in charge of 20,000 employees across the 56 regional offices and is responsible for $90 billion in benefits to veterans and their dependents. These involve the whole list of benefits, including compensation, home loan guaranty, vocational rehab, education ... all of it.

And what of those two regional directors who abused their authority and pushed others out of their jobs? They were demoted ... not fired, not sent to jail, just demoted. And now they've apparently been reinstated, although with a 10 percent cut in pay. The Merit Systems Protection Board gave them their jobs back because their bosses at the time had allowed all the mischief.

Nowhere is there any talk of their having to pay back the $400,000 in moving expenses they received, even though one of them only moved 140 miles and netted $300,000 in travel expenses, which included reimbursement for $76 for alcoholic beverages.

Eligibility by phone

If you're a combat veteran, you no longer have to fill out and sign papers to sign up for health care. As of right now, you can do it by phone.

This is part of the Department of Veterans Affairs push to get all incomplete applications of combat veterans reviewed and reworked. There are currently 31,000 combat veterans with incomplete applications.

Other veterans will be able to enroll this way as of July 5, 2016.

This now makes three ways to enroll. You can do it online, you can do it on paper with the VA Form 10-10 EZ. And now you can just pick up the phone.

If you've enrolled since July 1, 2015, you've gotten extra goodies. You got a phone call from the Health Resource Center for one thing, welcoming you to the VA and introducing you to all that's available to you, as well as information about resources and programs. You got a personal letter and handbook and help getting your first appointment scheduled.

If you want to know more, call the Health Eligibility Center Enrollment and Eligibility Division at 1-855-488-8440.

Additionally, if you're one of the 545,000 veterans who currently have incomplete applications pending, you now have a year to complete the paperwork. (They also discovered, while hunting for those files, an additional 288,000 pending applications for veterans who are now deceased.) As part of the Veteran Enrollment Rework Project, the VA is required to notify you about pending and incomplete applications and to take another look to see if you should have actually been enrolled already. The "one year" meter starts running once they contact you.

If you want to know more about VA benefits you also can call 1-877-222-8387.

(c) 2016 King Features Synd., Inc.