Professor: Disability checks harmful to veterans

A West Point professor and Iraq War vet wants the government to limit veteran disability benefits in favor of incentives to work.

Lt. Col. Daniel M. Gade, himself an amputee, shared his vision with Pensacola residents during the Panhandle Tiger Bay Club monthly meeting Friday.

"Too many veterans become financially dependent on monthly disability checks, choose not to find jobs, and lose their sense of identity and self-worth that can come from work," Gade said.

At the core of Gade's theory is the belief that disability checks designed to help disabled vets might actually be harmful to them by possibly causing a sense of dependability.

Every veteran who leaves the military is required to be exposed to the programs offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs, but due to a flawed a system, veterans are over-claiming, he said.

"As our number of veterans in America decline, our number of disabled veterans climb," Gade said. "Due to this idea of mandatory exposure."

According to Gade, the system says that every change in a veteran's health from entry to discharge is considered to be service connected. This means the multitude of deteriorating physical capacities a veteran experiences from 18 to 38 years old after serving a full 20-year career, is the military's fault, Gade said, and the American government's responsibility.

"To attribute that, to lay that at the feet of the government, is explicitly what the current system does," Gade said.

Gade is a public policy professor at West Point, who travels the country on his personal time sharing his theory on how veterans' disability checks are further crippling veterans.

The incentives to maximize illness can be seen in Gade's disability escalator. The more disabilities veterans claim, the more money they get. The jump from 10 percent disability to 20 percent is an additional $1,500 per year, but the jump from 90 percent to 100 percent is a $10,000-per year increase.

In addition, programs like Individual Unemployability allow veterans not eligible for full benefits to be compensated at the 100 percent rate so long as they don't work.

"The incentive, very explicitly, is to maximize the things that you can't do," Gade said.

Gade's theory shows the solution to the broken system to be redefining the word disability and providing incentives for recovery and positive behavior.

Redefining disability means eliminating age-related and common conditions and focusing on the most severely disabled veterans with the most severe conditions. It also means giving bonuses for healthy behaviors such as not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight and having meaningful employment.

Edwin Howard, Panhandle Tiger Bay Club vice president of programs, believes in Gade's theory and has proven his solutions could work.

A Navy Reserve intelligence officer, Howard was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after returning from a tour in Liberia as an active duty sailor. In a meeting with his doctor, the option for Howard to receive 40 percent disability should his treatment be unsuccessful was discussed, but he decided that path wasn't for him. And while Howard does have some VA benefits, he successfully completed his treatment and continued on to the reserves.

"Being military, I was taught to fight and win," Howard said. "I wanted something more and was willing to fight for it."

While Howard genuinely believes some veterans rightly deserve disability benefits, he also sees the flaws in the system and hopes ideas like Gade's, whether people agree or disagree, will at least be heard.

"Veterans Affairs and how we care for those who have served tells a lot about who we are as a people," Howard said.