CHAMPVA

Question:

When my husband first became eligible for CHAMPVA due to my being designated 100% P&T .. we gathered up about 9 months of EOBs from his doctor's visits and hospital stays and sent them to CHAMPVA and then got a letter back that we needed a form from each doctor's office. We gathered those up, calling each doctor's office, etc. When we resubmitted them, we sent them to the address for resubmission that we'd been given. Since then we've got a small amount, and then we got a letter saying the other things were submitted too late. I've been calling CHAMPVA for over a year now, and supposedly the items have been resubmitted with an explanation. Today I got 'they weren't submitted in a timely fashion.' They've been pulling that for over 2 years. OR 'the documentation needed is not present' when a clerk answering the phone found it without any problem.

 

Jim's Reply:

I'm pretty sure that in every inquiry I've had about CHAMPVA over the years, each reply will have the word 'persistence' in it. My wife has used CHAMPVA for a lot of years and we think it's as good as it gets...when it works. It's when there's a glitch that CHAMPVA really shows the dark side of your VA. Telephones and voice mail boxes don't work, calls get dropped, messages aren't returned, faxes aren't received or they're somewhere but can't be found.

CHAMPVA is bureaucracy, defined. 

The only answer to the problem is persistence. You may have to spend and entire week or month or year calling and calling again to resolve problems. There is no other solution...Congress isn't fixing this and VA leadership is so scattered nobody is in position long enough to change the way the CHAMPVA system works.

Good luck.