The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is a federal Cabinet-level agency. It provides integrated life-long healthcare services to eligible military veterans. Non-healthcare benefits include disability compensation, vocational rehabilitation, education assistance, home loans, and life insurance. In Fiscal Year 2016 net program costs for the department were USD 273 billion.
About United States Department of Veterans Affairs in brief
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is a federal Cabinet-level agency. It provides integrated life-long healthcare services to eligible military veterans. Non-healthcare benefits include disability compensation, vocational rehabilitation, education assistance, home loans, and life insurance. It also provides burial and memorial benefits to eligible veterans and family members at 135 national cemeteries. While veterans benefits were provided by the Federal Government since the American Revolutionary War, a veteran-specific federal agency was not established until 1930 as Veterans Administration. In 1982, its mission was extended to a fourth mission to provide care to non-veterans and civilians in case of national emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. In 1989 the Veterans Administration became a cabinet-level department. The VA employs 377,805 people at hundreds of Veterans. Affairs medical facilities, clinics, benefits offices, and cemetersies. In Fiscal Year 2016 net program costs for the department were USD 273 billion, which includes VBA Actuarial Cost of USD 106. 5 billion for compensation benefits. The long-term actuarial accrued liability is USD 2. 491 trillion for Compensation benefits; USD 59. 6 billion for education benefits; and USD 4.6 billion for burial benefits. The VA maintains a detailed list of war wounded as it is the population that comprises the VA care system. It is these wars that have primarily driven the mission and evolution of the VA. The list of wars involving the U.S. from theAmerican Revolutionary War to the present totals ninety nine wars.
The majority of the United States military casualties of war occurred in the following eight wars: American Revolutionary war, American Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Iraq War, War in Afghanistan. It is the VA that cares for the wounded soldiers that comprise the population the VA cares for. The agency is led by the Secretary of Veterans affairs, who, being a cabinet member, is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. In the 19th century, the nation’s veterans assistance program was expanded to include benefits and pensions not only for veterans, but also their widows and dependents. By the 1920s, the various benefits were administered by three different federal agencies: the Veterans Bureau, the Bureau of Pensions of the Interior Department, and the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. As a result, the VA went through a decentralization process giving more authority to the field offices. This centralization caused delays and bottlenecks in caring for veterans that were centralized in Washington, D.C. Prior to World War. II, in response to scandals at the Veterans bureau, veterans were cared for in field offices that cared for veterans in Washington. In late 1940s the VA had to contend with an addition of nearly 4,000 World War War I veterans and approximately 4, thousand World War III veterans. The World War Bill signed into law on June 22, 1944 was signed on 22 June 1944.
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This page is based on the article United States Department of Veterans Affairs published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 13, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
