Gudmundsson: The Hire More Heroes Act is misguided
Peter A. Gudmundsson, a former Marine artillery officer writes in the Washington Post that “The Hire More Heroes Act is misguided. There is no veterans’ unemployment crisis.” The Hire More Heroes Act simply exempts numbers of veterans in a business’ count of the 50-worker threshold at which they must provide health insurance or pay a fine under the Affordable Care Act. Simple, huh? Most veterans already get their healthcare from Tricare or the VA, so why not give the folks who hire them a break – well, unless you approve of the “taxation” of the Obamacare plan.
Mr. Gudmundsson, however says that this particular bill treats veterans like victims;
Companies live or die based on their ability to find intelligent, hard-working employees. It would be foolish to hire someone based on a financial incentive if that person were not likely to excel; the costs would outweigh the gains. Quality drives hiring, not a health-care head-count exemption.
The irony is that one of the few topics that can unite both sides of the aisle in Congress is veterans’ affairs. Yet lawmakers are harnessing bipartisan good intentions to pass a bill whose most significant legacy would be to increase the federal deficit by nearly $900 million. There is simply no need for Congress to turn veterans into a cynical “exemption” in the otherwise flourishing market for high-quality human capital. The idea that veterans require or deserve special treatment is anachronistic, counterproductive and insulting.
Who is to say that employers wouldn’t hire this nebulous veteran we’re discussing regardless? Lord knows that the Washington Post, CNN, and countless other media outlets have given employers enough reasons to NOT hire a veteran with their focus on the bad things a small number of veterans do. Why not give a veteran a break in this regard. Certainly, no employer is going to hire a completely unqualified candidate based solely on their tax status.
I’ll agree that a lot of legislation that comes out of Congress in regards to veteran employment is pretty useless, and this one is in that mix, too, but the only reason to oppose this one is purely political opposition to anything that creates a loophole for a business to avoid participation in the Affordable Care Act. It helps small businesses avoid excess taxation.
Mr. Gudmundsson should be more honest about his opposition.
Category: Veterans Issues
Most veterans do not use Tricare or any other type of military related care. Most veterans have moved on with their lives after service. The bulk majority of veterans do not use veteran benefits in any manner.
As best I can determine, this Act only benefits the employer. One of the reasons unemployment is slightly higher for veteran is they qualify for it upon reaching their EAS. I would guess most enroll if they do not have a job lined up at point as they should enroll. But it has an effect on the numbers.
I hire veterans and fired one for giving me a fake 214. I will look into it, but I wonder how does one prove they are a veteran to qualify for this program.
Any attempt to establish a working model of service verification has been met with resistance. I dont give up easily, we shall see. Seems this Act is ripe for fraud and abuse from both sides.
Not only did I stay on Tricare, my wife happily took the $300/month that Lockheed Martin paid her for not taking their health insurance.
I cannot wait for my husband to get out and us to swap insurances. Tricare for us so far has been a joke.
Don’t forget, if you like your health care plan, you can keep your healthcare plan, period! And, if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor, period!! That’s the joke.
I don’t know if I am an anomaly, but I have never had one problem with TRICARE. As a retiree, I have been completely happy with the care I have received from them.
A few years back, I was diagnosed with kidney cancer on 7 December. I had surgery to remove my right kidney on 11 December. After the surgery, I was told by the case nurse taking care of my post op care that TRICARE would pay for my travel and expenses to any cancer facility in the U.S. that I wanted to go to. Pretty damn good deal.
Not a peep from TRICARE when I wanted to be followed by an oncologist on a regular basis.
About a year ago, my cancer came back in my lung. Same experience. Right to surgery. TRICARE paid everything. And now, I’m in a clinical trial which TRICARE is paying for.
Routine care the same.
If I need a routine appointment, I might have to wait a week. If I need to go sooner, I can go to a doc other than my PCM at Fort Detrick or, I can choose to go to an emergency room. No problem.
The only time my wife and I had an issue was when she went to an Urgent care facility and TRICARE wouldn’t pay cause she hadn’t gotten authorization. That’s it in 8 years of retirement and in three different locations.
Finally, you cannot beat the cost of TRICARE with a stick. It’s amazing how little it costs compared to other insurance plans.
I would guess most people who retire or are using the VA probably do use these services. Most veterans only serve 4 years or a bit over that, do not retire or use the VA.
I am curious to see how this program will work in practical application. What means testing do they use to determine the person hired is actually a veteran.
The tax filing for all individuals has been modified this year to include new questions and forms. Many people that previously filed with a 1040EZ will not be able to do so this year.
The funniest thing about the tax rules concerning this is the exceptions that may be filed. Insufficient income to pay for the insurance is a big one. So this health care program that was to provide care to the most needy (low income) provide an exception to those very people so they dont have to get it.
Expect to file an additional form or two this year. If anyone has insurance through the Exchange or Marketplace they will have to wait until they receive a 1095A form in the mail before they can file.
If they were overpaid assistance it will be taken back at filing. These programs are never simple and the rules are never black and white.
Dave Hardin: true, most vets don’t use the VA for their healthcare. But a surprising fraction does.
There are about 22M vets in the US. In FY 2013, the VA provided healthcare services to over 5.7M of them – or to nearly 26%. (Total groups 1 through 8G of the spreadsheet found at this link: http://www.va.gov/vetdata/Utilization.asp )
FWIW, that’s actually not a complete count. It doesn’t include vets in state nursing home care or those who come for readjustment counseling only.
That is about the same number I get at around 19.6M living veterans. 18% claiming service connected disability. That is about 1 in 5. About 1 million of them are rated 70% or higher. I am always skeptical of number being provided by an agency who has a dog in the fight, but often that can not be avoided. I assume the census figures are probably more accurate. The excel version of the numbers from the VA gives an accounting geek hours of number crunching. The VA much like the IRS does not publish an accurate financial statement of itself. I feel comfortable stating that 1 in 5 service members are not really disabled because of their service. Most often even if they are receiving some service it is limited and can not be called a health care plan. The actual implementation of the Affordable Care Act does not attain its goal. In fact, it makes special provisions so that it will not. For example, most of my income is from dividends in the form of distributions. This is not considered ‘Earned Income’ therefore outside of the current guidelines of this act. I can afford probably more than a trip to McDonalds now and then. Under these provisions my Earned Income could still be under the limit of poverty and exempt from the ACA. So would Warren Buffett. This act is a mess, or a clusterfuck if you like. Capital Gains tax has gone through the roof. The like kind exchange rules have not changed so an avalanche of asset exchange will now go on. This results in a false inflation of asset values. Corporate tax rates are not tenable so there is no incentive for retained earnings, resulting in an elevation of debt to income ratio’s. Roughly 43.5% of my income will go to the Federal, State, and local governemts…..unless I spend it on an investment in so called business. What happens is I buy an asset (rental house, liqueur store, or strip club) at 15% above its actual value and still save a 28.5% discount on that property.… Read more »
One last thing I would like to share related to my opinions on these issues. I am Atheist and Conservative. If I go to a Republican function and they find out I am Atheist people begin to act like I just announced I am infected with Ebola. If I go to a Democrat function and they find out I am conservative they act like I just pissed on Al Gore. Well, maybe the thought has not occurred to me.
The original discussion wasn’t about how many vets are disabled, Dave. The original discussion concerned how many vets were using VA medical services. That said, I’ll try to give you an estimate of the number of vets with a service-connected disability using the VA for healthcare. The VA is technically authorized to offer healthcare for ALL veterans, provided funding is available and copayments required by law are paid. (Not saying this is as it should be, but its reality.) Available funding and Federal law prescribes who may receive care from the VA at any given time. However, it doesn’t limit it as severely as you might think; the VA spends $150+B annually these days. Additionally, Federal law prescribes several “special” categories of personnel who are presumptively eligible for VA healthcare without evidence of disability. These special groups now include pretty much anyone who ever served in Vietnam (extensive list of presumptive conditions, including many common in the aging US nonvet population), the first Gulf War (shorter list), or who served at Camp Lejune during a 30-year period (unsure, but believe it’s a longer list of conditions than the Gulf War). In many cases, copayments are waived for those in these special categories. The VA groups vets into 8 distinct priority groups for care (some have subgroups). These are explained at a different page on the link I provided above. Copayment requirements for those in these subgroups varies, and is explained elsewhere (I’ve provided a link to the explanation in a previous article). Those with VA-recognized disabilities are authorized to receive care from the VA for those disabilities, and can also receive care for other conditions after they register with VA healthcare. If a vet meets income criteria, all copayments are waived. If a vet makes too much and is less than 50% disabled, they are charged copayments. Answering the question of how many disabled vets are using the VA for healthcare services is not straightforward, as some of the VA categories contain both disabled and non-disabled vets. Categories 1, 2, 3, 8a, and 8b are composed of vets with VA-recognized… Read more »
Thanks for the response Hondo. I wish I had a more succinct way to get my point across. Writing about it helps. There are several things about the original post that I both agree and disagree with. I agree that many existing and proposed programs cast a tone of helping the ‘poor little veteran’ or feed what I see as victimization of veteran’s syndrome. I disagree with the statement in the post ‘Most veterans already get their healthcare from Tricare or the VA’, and I think we have both made that point. I have no issue whatsoever with providing complete and comprehensive healthcare for veterans that were injured during their service, I am sure you do not either. I don’t care if the injury was combat related or if they find out they have cancer or any other chronic illness. We should be taking better care of these people than we are. The Hire Heroes Act is misguided. The affordable health care act that should provide the services for any veteran who does not have a service related medical condition, is a convoluted mess. People thinking that someone else will pay the bill, is a shell game or a Ponzi scheme at best. I will hold to my numbers that 1 in 5 are seeking services from the VA for a medical reason but nobody knows the real answer, their current system assures that. Create a database to verify veteran’s service. The Department of Personal Records has no excuse at this point for not getting that done. Fund that and get it done. The savings from that single act will justify its cost. I am tired of hearing that the project is too big. Please, the IRS knows immediately every time I make a deposit in the bank over $3,500. Saying that we do not have the ability to track data is utter nonsense. Lets employ some honestly disabled veterans to get the job done, in today’s world they could get most of this done from their home. Curtail eligibility for VA medical services. The abuse of PTSD claims is… Read more »
I was amazed a few years back when my Vietnam vet brother (not a retiree) told me he uses the VA for his health care. Not being seen for any combat related injuries, just regular care. I’m sure there’s more than a few like him.
I use the VA for everything except dental.
My unit came home from Iraq in May 2010, and a lot of the guys who were planning on returning to school in the fall went on unemployment over the summer. It made perfect sense – it was a bad economy, and they could only give an employer three months before classes started, so finding a job was not easy. Meanwhile, they’d just spent 14 months in training or on a deployment, which meant two things: first, we all needed some time to decompress; and second, they had some bank – more than they’d ever had before. More than a year of E3-E5 pay, much of that tax-free, with hostile fire pay, jump pay, etc., combined with pretty much nothing to spend it on, and there was really no NEED to get a job. So they’d get unemployment, kind of make a desultory job search, but basically be killing time until school started.
Given that background, I’ve always been a little dubious about the high unemployment rates for returning veterans. This article lays out a few other issues that contribute to inflating that unemployment rate:
http://www.gijobs.com/the-real-story-behind-veteran-unemployment-rates.aspx
All of this being said, I’m all in favor of employers making special efforts to hire vets – I just don’t think we’re necessarily doing as bad a job at it as we sometimes think we are.
Well said, SSG E. Providing of course, someone actually saved their money and didn’t spend if frivolously. You are obviously a very intelligent person and I have no doubt your subordinates benefitted greatly. Well done.
The problem I’ve seen is unrealistic expectations where a service member thinks they can transition directly to a comparable paying job in the civilian sector without the required skills for the job.
Leadership? Certainly. Experience in that civilian sector? No. Unless you have two qualified candidates and one is a Vet – then always choose the Vet.
Then there are others who join the National Guard out of high school, graduate basic and 11B AIT, then go look for a great paying job claiming “I’m a Vet!” That does not work out so well.
It comes down to realistic expectations, discipline, and good counseling by leadership.
Old Sarge – I ran across this article, which agrees with you, nearly to the point of being redundant (especially when you were far more concise – obviously this dude was an officer):
http://nation.time.com/2013/03/12/the-veterans-jobless-crisis-that-isnt/
Aargh…that link’s gone dead…I’ll see if I can find it elsewhere…
I don’t want to see this used to dodge the “Affordable Care Act”. I want to see that Orwellian-labeled clusterfuck consigned to the dustbin of history, with no businesses needing to “dodge” it at all.
^^Like^^
The federal government does more for private companies that hire ex-cons than it does for Veterans. I’m sure Guggenheim/Gundersonn/Whatever pointed this out in his piece, but I can’t say b/c I didn’t read it. Not only will the feds dole out tax credits to companies but it will also provide fidelity bonding insurance, where needed for a hire.
THAT is no f’ng joke, either. Wifes cuz got outta the state guest program (did 2 yrs of a 3 yr stretch) in November. Reports to a halfway house for 3 days and gets a journeyman electricians job an hour after he scoots out the door of halfway house. Go fucking figure…
The part he doesn’t seem to understand is that there are already a bunch of vets coming into an already shitty job market, with more to follow as the branches keep cutting to make their RIF numbers.
You fella’s are way too smart for me. My thoughts are:
1. The ACA is not intended to work, it is intent is to lead to Single payer.
2. The VA centers will just be absorbed into The Big Brother Healthcare system.
3. This kind of crap legislation is generated to fool voters into thinking the folk’s that vote for it are Pro-Vet and deserve your (Vets) vote.
But you see, at the VA, I am treated by the Blue Team, so maybe they slipped me the Blue Pill while they had that probe up my ass.
I have never had a bad experience with the VA or Tricare, just sayin.
The otherwise flourishing market for human capital….
Not sure how true that is across the nation. I hire vets because I know what they can do and if all else is equal I am going with the guy who knows how to fit in and get shit done…
To be honest even if things are only a little unequal I’m going with the vet because I can teach the parts I need to teach to the vet but I have found a civilian background often means soft and undisciplined where a vet background means self-discipline and focus which can quickly make up for a lack of current knowledge.