Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much.

Veterans Affairs committee  With respect to the percentage of veterans...I'm trying to see if I have that number with me. I don't have an exact percentage of those in independent living programs, but I can certainly get that information to you.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, that is the situation here as well. That's something we have worked hard on with our vocational rehab program, as well as with the Veterans Health Administration, to encourage those veterans who are coming back with severe disabilities to get some readjustment counselling.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, we do. In conjunction with the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs offers transition assistance program briefings. All service members who are getting ready to retire or to be discharged from service are afforded an opportunity to go to those briefings.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not sure if you're familiar with how we do this. We have a formula to compute those. If a veteran is 20% for a condition, 10% for a condition, and 30% for another condition, there's a formula we have that allows us to.... They don't add together strictly as 20, 10, and 30, but we do add them together for a combined evaluation.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, sir. If you are rated permanent and totally disabled from your disabilities, you can be eligible for pension. You still have to meet the income threshold, however, which is relatively low for veterans who are working full time or even part time. The instance that you presented I would say would fall more under assistance under our vocational rehabilitation program, so that a veteran could get some help for employment, as long as you're still able to perform some type of regular job duties.

Veterans Affairs committee  With your hearing aids, the health administration has a program specifically for hearing and hearing aids and Ms. Patterson can cover that. From a pension perspective, if you're over 65 and you're determined to have a disability that makes you permanently and totally disabled so that you can't work at all—it could be a heart condition, it could be a back condition, it could be anything--it does not have to be service related.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, sir.

Veterans Affairs committee  Before this new GI bill that's going to be in effect August 1, 2009, it wouldn't necessarily go away. This program is going to continue, so a veteran who is in the reserves but who is called up as part of a national emergency or wartime period would still be eligible for this benefit.

Veterans Affairs committee  The medical centres are administered under the health administration, so that again would fall under Ms. Patterson. As far as benefits are concerned, if a veteran is in the hospital or anything, the benefits still continue. We don't have any sort of limit on that. If they're in a nursing home, sometimes we can grant additional benefits to cover aid and attendants.

Veterans Affairs committee  On your first question, concerning death benefits, the veteran's service will determine the amount of the death benefits a family receives. If the veteran had a service-related disability for which he was receiving benefits and he died from that particular disability, then his spouse specifically, and his child also, can be entitled to dependency indemnity compensation.

Veterans Affairs committee  The second part of the question, I believe, was about how we rate disabilities for service connection. We have what we call a rating schedule of disabilities, and it is broken down by parts of the body. It's also broken down by body systems. I'm trying to think quickly of something to relate it to.

Veterans Affairs committee  We have a lot of specific outreach that we do to veterans, and the health administration has some specific programs geared toward homeless veterans and to getting them off the streets. Ms. Patterson can speak more specifically to those. As far as benefits are concerned, we try to do significant outreach to let these veterans know that they may be eligible for benefits.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, Ma'am, there is an appeal process. Once a decision is made, a veteran or a beneficiary has up to a year from the date of the decision notification to come in and file an appeal for an increase in benefits.

Veterans Affairs committee  To be eligible for our disability pension program a veteran has to have 90 days of active duty. One of those days has to be in a war-time period as prescribed by law, and once they meet that threshold they also have to meet an income threshold. Under our current pension income limits, the income of a veteran with no dependants has to be less than $11,830.