Wisconsin Assistance to Needy Veterans

Section 45.40 is the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs hardship programme, and it does two distinct things. Subsistence aid replaces lost income. The department may pay a veteran month to month, or for a three-month period where the veteran will be incapacitated for more than three months and no other income or aid will be available in that period. The trigger is specific: the veteran must have suffered a loss of income due to illness, injury or natural disaster. A veteran who simply cannot find work is outside it. The cap is $3,000 per occurrence during a consecutive twelve-month period. Per occurrence is doing work there: a second, unrelated illness later in the same twelve months is a separate occurrence. No payment may be made if the veteran has other assets or income available to meet basic subsistence needs, or is eligible for aid from other sources. But in determining available assets the department may not count the first $50,000 of cash surrender value of any life insurance policy. That exclusion runs through both halves of the section and it is unusually generous: a veteran with a whole life policy is not required to cash it in before the state will help. Where the loss of income results from abuse of alcohol or other drugs, aid may be granted only if the veteran is participating in a treatment programme approved by the department. That is a condition rather than a bar. Health care aid is the second half and it covers what VA health care most often does not reach: dental care including dentures, vision care including frames and lenses, and hearing care including hearing aids. For many older veterans those three are the largest uncovered medical costs they face. Health care aid carries a hard asset test that subsistence aid does not: the department may not pay if the veteran's liquid assets exceed $1,000, again excluding the first $50,000 of life insurance cash surrender value. The provider must also agree to accept, as full payment, the department's payment plus any insurance or third-party payment plus whatever the department determines the veteran can pay. A provider unwilling to accept that closes the route, so the choice of provider matters. Dependents have their own eligibility. The unremarried spouse and dependent children of a veteran who died on active duty, or in the line of duty while on active or inactive duty for training, may receive both subsistence and health care aid subject to the income limits the department establishes. A health care provider who has diagnosed the veteran and determined the condition may complete the medical forms the section requires, which removes a common obstacle where the treating clinician is not a physician. Applications run through a county or tribal veterans service officer, and every Wisconsin county has one under 45.80.