Cincinnati vet among thousands who could get pay equity after medical discharge

When Phillip Beltran joined the Army as a light-wheel vehicle mechanic, he thought it would be a 20-year adventure that would end in retirement. In the end, only part of that would come true.

“Going in, I joined the military at 21. I figured at 41 I can get out and be retired and live a good life after that,” Beltran said. “I served four and a half by no choice of my own.”

After joining the Army, Beltran was stationed at Fort Drum and served as a mechanic for a Military Police Company. He arrived in 2004 and was deployed to Mosul, Iraq in 2005. That deployment would take him to other locations about an hour away in Tal Afar.

“It was definitely a shock to see the way the locals lived and the things that even the military had to deal with while we were there,” Beltran said.

He said he was rarely in harm’s way, assigned to a base in a secure zone repairing Humvees. He did admit there was an occasional mortar attack that the quick reaction force would then respond to and eliminate the threat.

Beltran's deployment revealed something hidden inside him.

“It progressed to the point where I would be under a vehicle, wrenching away, fixing something. I'd fall asleep, drop a wrench on my face, come back, come back away and go back doing it and then do it again. And it was terrible,” Beltran said.

He said while there were many jokes to go around by his fellow soldiers, it became very clear that there was something wrong. When he returned home, the issue continued as he would fall asleep standing in formation.

A visit to base doctors led to sleep studies and blood work. The diagnosis was narcolepsy.

“They're saying from the stress and maybe from the shocks and explosions, a few explosions and stuff — nothing directly, I never got directly hit or anything — could have caused the narcolepsy,” Beltran said.

His world was shattered. His dream of a 20-year career in the Army suddenly vanished.

“My career was over,” he said.

Medically discharged, his career was over but he did get a monthly retirement check. The problem came when he filed with the Department of Veterans Affairs for disability. He was first deemed to be 80% disabled, but when he couldn’t work due to the narcolepsy issue, he filed for "individual unemployability" giving him a 100% rating.

“So, I'm not allowed to work, even if I mean if I wanted to I couldn't,” Beltran said. “And I would like to, it's the whole narcolepsy issues that stopped me from doing it. So, now that's where I'm at. I live my life with narcolepsy.”

Reading this you might think Beltran is able to get two full payments — his retirement from the Army and the VA disability. But that’s not the case for veterans like him who didn’t serve 20 years of active duty.

“For every dollar the VA gives me, they take $1 from my retirement. So, as this goes up, this goes down,” he said.

It’s an issue for tens of thousands of veterans whose military careers were cut short due to a service-related injury.

“If they receive VA compensation, then either a portion or all of their military retired pay is waived in order for them to receive that VA compensation. And they're not allowed to receive their earned military retired pay for whether it was you know, one year up to 15 or 16 or 17 years of service, they're not eligible to receive that military retired pay,” said Marquis Barefield, Assistant National Legislative Director with Disabled American Veterans or DAV.

He said the DAV looks at this issue as the system penalizing the veteran when they’ve earned the benefits tied to the service they were able to provide before being medically retired due to service-connected issues.

“DAV along with other organizations to include the military coalition, they have been advocating for a way to get this Major Richard Star Act passed to fix this unjust, this unjust penalization, penalizing of military service members that can't receive their retirement pay and their VA compensation at the same time,” Barefield said.

The change would be a major financial boost to Beltran’s life and that of his wife and five children. He said he sees the bipartisan support on the bill as a positive sign, but he wants to see it get across the finish line.

“Just to bring it out for a vote and get all the folks that are claiming to support it, to have them put their money where their mouth is,” Beltran said.

DAV and other organizations are hoping to get the Major Richard Star Act put in as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act and the window of time is shrinking.

Barefield said this act is on its second Congress and time is limited now more than ever to get it done for veterans.

“Get out there and talk to your congressional representatives and talk to your senators, and make sure that they know the importance of this bill,” Barefield said. “They still need to hear from their constituents in their offices to let them know, this is a very important matter — not only to me as a veteran, but a spouse and a dependent, and even a widower out there that may be able to benefit from the passage of the Major Richard Star Act.”

You can read the full text of the Major Richard Star Act and see if your representative is currently cosponsoring the bill by following these links:

• House Bill
• Senate Bill

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