Some veterans are intitled to reimbursement for their travel to the VA for medical care.  Some examples are trips to have exams for Compensation and Pension claims.  Also, veterans can be paid when they receive care for service-connected disabilities.  Veterans with 30% disability or higher are paid for all VA health care visits.  There are more entitlements and details on the payments.  To find if you are eligible, go to – https://va.gov/get-reimbursed-for-travel-pay.

The VA is instituting a new system for you to get this reimbursement which it claims is a streamlined update.  However, it is shifting the work from processing the pay from the VA to the veteran.  The vet used to be able to walk up to a kiosk at a VA Healthcare facility, drop in their VA healthcare card, push a couple of buttons and the pay arrived in your checking account in 3-5 days.  Those days are long gone.  At some places, the pay doesn’t come for months.  The pay claims were all manually processed.

The mouth-full Beneficiary Travel Self-Service System (BTSSS) (say that fast three times) now shifts the work to the vet.  After the vet receives VA healthcare, they have to go to a new website – https://eauth.va.gov/accessva/ where the vet will have to electronically fill out the travel pay form.  Of course, you will need a valid VA log-in in order to access the site.  You will need a DS Logon Level 2 Account, which you can set up at https://www.va.gov/EAUTH/SALogon.asp .

The VA claims this new “efficient” payment system will put the payment in your checking account in 5 business days.  Implementation of this system varies throughout the country and some places still use the kiosk system until fully changed over.

(My experience has been it takes about three weeks to get paid.)

The VA states “BTSSS will reduce human intervention for each reimbursement claim request and improve tracking, reporting, and the auditing capability for all stages of the claims process.”

Opinion – The VA’s human intervention may be reduced, but the veteran’s will be dramatically increased.   The above statement is clearly a bunch of government bureaucratic gobbly-gook.  I believe that his procedure will stop many vets from filing the claim due to frustration and, in the long run save, just save the VA tons of money.