VA making debt collection less painful

VETERANS VOICE

Linda Mallon, a retired Army master sgt., found her niche working with veterans and their families in Granbury. She is a former claims administrator for Blue Shield of New Jersey and later senior personnel sergeant taking care of soldiers’ careers for more than 20 years.

If anyone has found themselves in debt with the Veterans Administration, they know it can be stressful. People who receive VA benefits, especially the pension recipients, sometimes may have limited means making it difficult to return an overpayment made by the VA. Most of the reasons for these overpayments are failure to update the VA on dependent information, school attendance or pension recipients income/medical expense changes, and the longer we wait to update the VA, the higher the debt becomes.

It’s very important to make sure to inform the VA as soon as a change occurs that may affect eligibility. If the VA determines an overpayment has occurred, they will send the beneficiary a letter explaining their rationale for reporting an overpayment and the proposed action they will take. The beneficiary will be given time to respond to the proposal with evidence to support their case. If the VA made a mistake or failed to consider evidence, they will take that into consideration when reviewing the case. If the overpayment information was correct, the VA will refer the case to Debt Management who will send a letter to the beneficiary with the amount of overpayment and a bill with an option to pay a monthly amount until the debt is paid.

Understanding that we are living in challenging times right now, the VA extended the time from 30 to 90 days to address their debt before deductions are made. This gives the beneficiary and me a chance to address the problem so we can either update the records, challenge the proposal or request a waiver.

Debt Management also partnered with the VHA Behavioral Health Office to provide online resources on mental health and managing stress and included this information in the letter.

Veterans also have the option to call Debt Management at 1-800-827-0648 to request a temporary debt suspension until Dec. 31, and request flexible debt collection relief. The VA also launched a VA Debt Portal allowing beneficiaries to manage their debt online. The VA will not report a debt to credit reporting agencies until all available collection efforts have been exhausted and the debt becomes uncollectible, meaning they tried every option but were unsuccessful. The VA will also not report debts to those agencies for catastrophically disabled veterans or those receiving free VA health care due to low income. If anyone should get an overpayment letter from the VA, contact my office immediately. I have been very successful working with debt management and in some cases depending on the circumstance I may be able to get the debt waived altogether.

The Hood County Veteran Service Office is located in the Historic Courthouse on the square, 100 East Pearl Street, in Granbury on the first floor behind the elevator. Our Glen Rose office is located in the Somervell County Annex on the Vine Street side. Please call for an appointment at 817-579-3292 so I don’t miss you.

lmallon@co.hood.tx.us | 817-579-3292