Northrop Grumman Information Technology

Northrop Grumman Information Technology

Moderator: Lucy Miller

05-19-10/1:00 p.m. CT

Confirmation # 70950147

Page 1

Northrop Grumman Information Technology

Moderator:Lucy Miller

May 19, 2010

1:00 p.m. CT

Operator:Good afternoon my name is (Sarah) and I’ll be the conference operator today. At this time, I’d like to welcome everyone to the Veteran’s Benefits Conference Call.

All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session.

If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key.

Thank you. Ms. Miller, you may begin your conference.

Lucy Miller:Thank you, (Sarah).

Hello everybody. Good afternoon.

Just a few reminders before we jump in, this is part two of a two-part training series on issues related to serving, providing with the services to veterans with disabilities. Part one was two weeks ago, and that session focused on the rehabilitation services, employment supports, the places where veterans can go to get help with achieving their occupational or career goals.

So today’s call, we’re not going to touch on those subjects at all. Today’s call is focused strictly on benefits that veterans receive primarily from the Veteran’s Administration, or the V.A., although we will touch on a little bit of some things that they can get straight from their branch of the military, the Department of Defense. And we’ll also touch a little bit on the healthcare system through the Veteran’s Administration that veterans have access to.

The call is scheduled for two hours. And typically what I’ll do is we’ll cover a topic, and when it comes to a logical stopping point, I will stop and call for questions so that we can get things answered without having to wait till the very end of the program. So while I’m speaking, if you think of something on the topic that you want to ask, jot it down, and about every half an hour or so I’ll go ahead and call for questions so that we don’t have everybody waiting to the end.

Now, as always, with these calls, you would have gotten a paper. In this case, I think you probably got two papers. You got the big, long paper on providing what the services to veterans with disabilities, and hopefully you’ve read that because the material that we go over today is kind of a Reader’s Digest condensed version. We push you through pretty fast, so if you haven’t read that paper you’re going to struggle a little bit to keep up.

There was also a companion paper that I hope you’ve scanned for today, and that was a wonderful paper developed by our friends at the World Institute on Disability in California on the healthcare options for veterans with disabilities. And there’s a little bit of that in the larger paper, but the WIPA paper goes into it in more detail and gives some advice about how to counsel veterans on healthcare issues, things like that.

You also should have a PowerPoint presentation, we hope, for part two. You should have gotten part one for two weeks ago. Part two is for today, and hopefully that’s either up on your screen and you’re sitting in front of your computer or you’ve printed that out and can follow along.

So that’s about it for the intro. Let’s just jump right on in. And we’ll begin with a reminder that just because a person is a veteran it doesn’t mean that that person has been bumped to the top priority for WIPA services. Remember that in order to qualify for WIPA services, an individual has to be receiving a Social Security benefit based on disability.

Now, they might also be receiving veterans’ benefits or any number of other benefits, certainly military retirement due to disability. But if they aren’t already receiving Social Security due to disability, they’re not eligible for your services.

Now, something else to remember is that just because a person comes to you who’s getting Social Security based on disability and getting a veterans’ benefit, that person isn’t going to be any higher priority than anybody else just based on veteran’s status. Remember that priority in WIPA is really about are you interested in going back to work? Are you planning to reenter the labor market? Are you preparing for work or are you already employed?

So it – really, priority in our world is really about your proximity to the mission of WIPA services, which is promoting work and enhancing self-sufficiency.

So you will get calls from veterans who either had never applied for Social Security or are in that process. And just like all callers who might be in the process of getting – of working through that application, all you can really provide is information and referral. They have to already be on benefits to actually qualify for services from you.

Well, the next slide talks about verifying, and this is interesting in the V.A. program. You all know that if you’re going to offer services that are individualized, meaning more than just sort of generic information about how a particular benefit might be affected by work, that we just beat it into you that you need to verify, verify, verify. And in the Social Security system, that’s not a problem because you have access to benefits planning queries or BPQIs. You can even get TPQIs, third party queries from Social Security.

However, on the veteran’s side, I’m very sorry to say, there is no such report that a CWIC can readily access to verify exactly what a veteran is getting from the V.A. or from the military. Now, I’m going to give you some tips on how to verify, but the exact route you take is going to depend on the actual individual and what information that person might have and what connection that person might have to programs within the V.A. that can help you verify.

First of all, the main types of cash payments that you get from the V.A., one of them you get because you have a service-related disability. That’s V.A. disability compensation. Believe me those ladies and gentlemen know when they are getting a benefit based on a service connected disability, because when they go through the whole disability determination process for the V.A. that is a huge thing that has to be proven. So, and that process is pretty onerous. Lengthy indeed, probably more lengthy than a Social Security disability determination.

So in most cases, the veteran sitting across the table from you or on the phone call is going to know, yes, I have a service connected disability. It’s V.A. compensation as opposed to the pension program. Having said that, you and I both know there are going to be people who really don’t know. They might have intellectual impairment, a severe and chronic mental illness, memory impairment, some head injury, all sorts of reasons why that person would not be clear about exactly what they’re getting.

The best strategy to take when that happens is to ask if the individual has any written correspondence, anything that you can look at. A letter, a confirmation letter, (the award) letter. Any correspondence from the V.A. that might indicate exactly what type of benefits a person receives.

If that doesn’t work, the last thing I know to do would be to ask if the individual has an involvement with the local V.A. hospital, a V.A. medical center, one of the vet service centers that we talked about two weeks ago, anybody in that veteran system, even if – with that rep perhaps that work for your State Department for Employment Services. Anybody who’s in that system might have a way to access that information. Certainly, social workers at the hospital, case managers at the V.A. hospitals are going to have a way to look that up and verify for you.

I wish I had the silver bullet on this issue. I wish that there was an equivalent of the TPQI or BPQI in the V.A. system. There’s just isn’t. It’s not set up to the type of benefits counseling that we get. So you are going to have to go through a little bit more in some cases to verify what is this person getting. And, of course, you still have to verify the Social Security stuff using the TPQI or the BPQI, and certainly any other benefits the individual may be engaged in or be receiving food stamps or had having subsidy, whatever it might be and you want to verify any of those benefits just as we would do with any beneficiary.

Let’s take a look at the most common types of cash benefits that are available to veterans with disabilities, and you’re going to see the same things pop up over and over again.

First, although it is actually the least common one on this slide, is military retirement based on disability. And this is not a benefit provided by the V.A. – the Veterans Administration. This is a benefit provided by the branch of the Armed Forces that the individual was in the Department of Defense, and it really is just regular old retirement for years of service, but you’re retiring because of disability.

And there are completely different rules about how the DoD – Department of Defense benefits the military retirement benefits are treated and how they all work to the V.A. benefit. And again, you need to ask are you getting retirement based on disability or are you getting a V.A. benefit.

Now, under the Veterans Administration, just to make it complicated, there are two different types of cash benefits available. First is V.A. disability compensation and we’ll go through the requirements for all of this but it is generally provided to people who had a service connected disability. And the second one is V.A. disability pension and that is a program provided to eligible individuals who have disabilities that are not related to their military service.

Now, you know that on top of those military benefits, you have the usual benefits provided by Social Security. You’ve got Title II disability benefits and the overwhelming majority of the veterans you’ll serve are not going to be getting CDB – Childhood Disability Benefits or Disabled Widows or Widower. They’re going to be getting the basic Social Security disability insurance.

Having said that, all of you know to check and ask and it will indicate which flavor of the Title II disability benefits the person gets on that BPQI. And occasionally, particularly people that have V.A. disability pension, you may also see some Supplemental Security Income or SSI, not that uncommon.

And particularly, I’m sorry to say, in the population of veterans who experience homelessness, and as we mentioned on the call two weeks ago, unfortunately in the homeless population, veterans are disproportionately represented in that world. So some of the individuals that are homeless who are veterans, you will see on SSI, sometimes also on pension, but not always.

Well, those are the main categories. It certainly adds some complication to your standard beneficiary to have the additional benefits available from either the V.A. or the Department of Defense.

Well, on the next slide, just to make things even more complicated, the V.A. and the military maintain their own separate health care system. Well, if a veteran is getting military retirement, they’re going to be covered like all military retirees by the military health care system and that’s called TRICARE. And, again, most veterans are going to know, are you on retirement, are you getting TRICARE, they’ll have an identification card, you know, they have correspondence, something to show you what they’re receiving. And TRICARE is just a standard health insurance program available to members of the military.

Now, if a veteran’s getting V.A. benefit due to disability, they’re likely to be receiving health care from the V.A., the Veterans Administration health care system and this is a huge system completely separate from the whole TRICARE issue and certainly separate from the private health care system where our beneficiaries may be taking their Medicaid – or Medicare or Medicaid card and purchasing services with that.

The V.A. system is delivered through the V.A. health care facilities, either the hospitals or the V.A. medical centers. You use their facilities when you access the system rather than have like insurance that you go anywhere and pay for.

You all know that if you’re also receiving a Social Security disability benefit that if you’ve (inaudible) your prerequisite waiting period that Medicare can come with that, you’re going to find a whole pile of people out there who get – who are using the V.A. health care system and have Medicare coverage.

And you’re going to see all kinds of configurations there with Medicare with people that maybe have (Part A) by itself, they’ve declined Part B or they’ll have Part A and Part B, and in some cases, they will have decided that they want to purchase the whole deal, maybe they live very far away from a V.A. health care facility and it’s just didn’t – they’ve decided that Medicare is a better route for meeting their health care needs, and any combination thereof. So things get really complicated.

Remember, if the individuals getting SSI, there’s going to be Medicaid, but there are lots of ways to get a Medicaid card. You’re going to run into veterans sometimes that are going to be members of your state’s Medicaid waiver program. You might have a member of the Military or a veteran whose children are getting SHIP, that’s the State Health Insurance Program, which is a form of Medicaid which is affected by working. It’ll be something that you’d need to know.

So as with all of our beneficiaries, when you’re doing that intake or gathering information, you’d need to be asking about all the usual Medicaid programs if your state has a buy-end or a medically (inaudible) program, you’d want to be asking about that too, because there’s no rule that says that a veteran can’t have multiple forms of medical insurance simultaneously and some of the ladies and gentlemen that you serve will have more than one, certainly even maybe more than two. So you can have lots of complication there that you need to get to the bottom of.

In the next slide, let’s take a look at some health care considerations for veterans. Because they have access to multiple forms of health insurance, the different forms of health insurance interact and can cause some problems. There’s also some real opportunities for veterans.

Don’t assume that the veterans who call you know what their options are with regard to health care. A lot of the veterans will come out there pretty familiar with the V.A. system, because they would have come to that system when they were first disabled. But they’re not going to be very familiar with Medicare or Medicaid. Certainly not the various options your state may offer with regard to Medicaid.

Some states certainly offer lots and lots of choices and different programs, and don’t assume that veterans know. Don’t assume that a veteran who comes to you enrolled in a V.A. health care system that all is well. That their health care needs are being met. They may be, but we need to ask because that assumption can be completely wrong. If they – a veteran lives in a very remote rural area, may not have good transportation that individual may have no way to access the health care facilities that are part of the V.A. health care system. You’re kind of have to go to their shops in order to get the service.

So those individuals who may certainly want to avail themselves of everything they can through Medicare and may even need to and be qualified for one of your Medicaid programs. So, again, treat the veterans like they are any other beneficiary with regard to checking. Do you get this? Do you get this? Do you get this? Are your health care needs getting met? Are you able to afford your prescriptions? Are you able to get to your doctor’s appointment taken care of? Do you need us to explore some additional options for you or are things OK? Don’t assume. Be sure to ask those questions.

Don’t forget too that for individuals who participate in Medicare, if they’re paying for those premiums for Part B and Part D, the Medicare Savings Program, you know, the QMB, the SLMB and the Part D Low Income Subsidy are still out there. Certainly, many veterans have income that’s high enough to preclude those. They wouldn’t be eligible, but not all. Not all.

Again, remember, homelessness and veteran status go hand in hand. A lot of those gentlemen and ladies are going to have SSIs. They’re going to be a very low income. They might need help paying for those premiums. In this day and age of high unemployment, people are not having the resources that we might expect them otherwise to have.

So don’t assume. Ask. Are you having trouble paying this? Let’s take a look at your income. Do we think you can qualify for at least SLMB which would pay for at least that Medicare Part B premium and certainly looking into eligibility for the Part D low income subsidy? Even if it’s not 100 percent, maybe you can get a little bit of assistance there and assistance may be better than none.