The two-year-old pilot program has scoured southwest Washington to find hundreds whose care was being paid for by the state, but should have been covered by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
It also has helped veterans living in nursing homes, as well as the surviving spouses of veterans, receive benefits that many didn't know they had coming, said Bill Allman, the project manager with the state Department of Social and Health Services.
"They feel better about themselves. ‘I'm not on public assistance, I'm on veterans benefits, and I earned these,'" Allman said. "As a Vietnam veteran I can tell you I'd much rather be on veterans benefits."
Allman said he always figured there were many low-income and elderly veterans whose care in nursing homes and other assisted-living facilities was covered by Medicaid instead of the VA. But it wasn't until the state joined a national computer database that he had a straightforward way to find them, he said.
The database was originally envisioned as a way to catch people receiving welfare in more than one state. It allows states to compare the names and Social Security numbers of persons enrolled in their programs with persons on the rolls in other states and at the Department of Defense and the VA.
• Veterans living in nursing homes who were entitled to monthly payments of $500 or more - a VA benefit paid to those who require the help of another person for some basic functions of daily life.
And it has spared some widows from what in most cases is a nasty surprise upon the death of their husbands: The law requires the state to recover its Medicaid expenses from the estates of long-term care recipients.
Missed benefits is most acute among World War II and Korea veterans, particularly those whose health has failed and whose wives are now left to make their way through the bureaucratic thicket of insurance and government benefits, Allman said.
"She doesn't know. He's always handled everything," he said. "The World War II guys, that's how it is. … They come in. He's had a stroke, she doesn't know that he's eligible."
Allman said "there's hundreds upon hundreds we've sent up" to the state Department of Veterans Affairs, where claims workers help them pursue benefits with the federal VA.
Pierce County is home to more than 96,000 veterans. Allman said he expects to easily find between 500 and 1,000 people on Medicaid who may be eligible for VA benefits.
"We're assuming the motherlode of veterans is up in the Pierce County area," said Allman, who splits time between his Vancouver office and Olympia.
It is attracting attention in other states. Budget analysts in California estimated the state could shift some $275 million in medical costs to the federal government.
So what happens if the program catches on and drives up the VA's obligations? The agency already faces a potential budget shortfall of $2.5 billion and growing numbers of new veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.
VA officials in Seattle said they haven't seen big spikes in applications for benefits as a result of the state program. They said they try to identify veterans by screening Medicaid applications and conducting outreach efforts at nursing homes and other facilities.
"We wouldn't say to the states ‘don't encourage people to apply for their benefits,'" said Leanne Weldin, a spokeswoman for the VA's Veterans Benefits Administration in Seattle. "Because that's what we're here for."
As it is, Washington veterans aren't using all the benefits they've earned, said John Lee, director of the state Department of Veterans Affairs. If the new program leads to a funding crunch at the federal VA, so be it.
"I think that would be a fortunate consequence," Lee said, "because I've got to think our elected officials at the federal level will find the resources to help our veterans."
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