Hey Veterans, have you faced uncertainty over whether necessary medical care would be covered by your private insurance? Have you had to fight through endless red tape to get life-saving treatment? Did you have to delay a procedure because your doctor needed to get pre-authorization from your insurance company? Have you had to spend hours searching for an approved in-network doctor?

Many people have faced these and a multitude of other frustrations when attempting to obtain necessary or lifesaving medical treatment for their conditions. But there’s potentially a better option available for Veterans.

I’m Todd Wesche, the founder of Vetus Legal, LLC. We help Veterans obtain from the VA the benefits they deserve. Many Veterans can take advantage of an alternative to using the frustrating and expensive private health insurance systems. That’s the VA health care system. VA health care is not insurance. It’s a full healthcare system. That means, quite simply, that if your VA healthcare provider believes that you need services, they can be provided in-house without the cost, delays, and frustrations common with profit-motivated insurance companies.

In fact, the VA provides eligible Veterans free health care, including prescriptions, dental, vision, and prosthetics in some circumstances. That means Veterans pay no monthly premiums, no co-pays, and no co-insurance. These services are provided at VA, VA facilities nationwide. If you’re not near one, you can obtain treatment from a local community health care provider. Of course, not every Veteran can just walk-in the VA and get free health care.

They do have to meet certain eligibility requirements. I’ve included a link to those requirements below. Once the VA has enrolled you into the VA health care system, it will assign you to one of eight priority groups. These are exactly what they sound like. The higher your priority group that you’re assigned to, the higher priority you’ll receive in obtaining treatment.

And it’s easy to get into a high-priority group. The gold standard is priority group number one, which is the highest priority group. You don’t need to be a Medal of Honor recipient to get into this group. In fact, Veterans are automatically assigned priority group number one if they suffer either a service-connected disability rated at 50% disabling or greater, or are found to be unemployable by the VA.

You can get to priority Group number two with a VA assigned 30% or 40% disability rating. So it doesn’t require a high degree of disability to get into a high-priority group. I strongly encourage veterans who have any disability that might be related to their military service to apply for both the VA healthcare and the VA Disability Compensation.

If the VA grants compensation, it will pay that veteran a monthly tax-free cash benefit based on the rating assigned for those disabilities and those same ratings will be used to determine the Veterans priority group in the health care system. And eligibility for disability compensation can make some veterans eligible for other VA and non-VA benefits. Check out my other videos below for more information about those benefits.

And this is where my firm can help. We help Veterans obtain disability compensation for their military-caused disabilities. As I just noted, the rating assigned for those disabilities can be a major factor in the health care priority group assigned. And once you’re taking advantage of these health care benefits, you don’t have to worry about private insurance. Of course, Veterans do not need to replace their private insurance with VA health care.

They can keep and use both if they want, but at a minimum. The VA health care system provides a way to ease the cost and frustration commonly experienced when using private medical insurance. Please reach out to us to see if we can help you get the VA disability rating you deserve and establish eligibility for that free VA health care that you were promised when you enlisted.

You earned through your service and now deserve, because of your disabilities.