i'm going to for today is the v a st rule and what it does is a says that when a veteran is converted from severance to military disability retirement as a result of proceedings through the physical disability review board or through the board for severance which everyone agrees is due back to the government because when you call on disability pay you no longer entitle to the severance and the effect of the v a role is illustrated by this case where the government implemented the trial entitled to receive both military disability or not entitled to receive and i focusing on receive i mean that's the issue that we have here with fifty three o four it's believe because it's back it's back pay and be split don't interrupt sorry because it's back pays better off than if it happened simultaneously yes chris that's the way the text reads right now he is offset st now if the severance is off present it seems to be a different you got two different questions here looks try not to complete them you want is whether he can get both disability been a disability pay and veterans benefits for the period this earlier period the nd one is whether he doesn't owe the government is severance pay because it should have been offset well i would refer you to the question if you if i can i think  the st question is when the back pay award is issued but that you but aren't there two separate questions here two separate or humans that are being made yes there are and i'm trying to rephrase them the way i'd like the court to prove look at them and over the way i'd like the court to look at them is st look at what section one thousand one hundred and seventy four age and the command that the severance be recovered from the back pay so even if you disagree with me on the issue of concurrent receipt in other words if you accept the government's argument that it applies retroactively matching it month by month by month by month that before you can do that you have to recover the backpack actually have to recover the separate it doesn't make any that particular issue doesn't have any impact on the amount of the bedroom cover here it wouldn't change the calculation of how the back pay is yes but answer my question would not affect the amount of the vet recovers it would not affect his back pay applying the v a offset to it the other thing i would like to feel like i mean the result here is just horrible for veterans in the sense that how why would come of the physical does this this is ability review board was created to encourage veterans to go through this process and then at the end of this process congratulations you've won your disability case you owe us two million thirty thousand dollars i mean can that be right because that would be what congress intended but you may have a good argument on the merits the problem is that that's chevron step to issue here lurking which the government has as declined to to advance and i would i would say this that at the very least you have to find fifty three dollars o four ambiguous between because the language today is different from the la is at the very least ambiguous because what is the explanation of at eight and c having different language and c having exactly the same language that the government is trying to put into aig but isn't there so if the court is going to honor if it's going to say doesn't have jurisdiction to review the woman seven for eight calculations and we're stuck with fifty three dollars o four then you have the very least you have to say that language is ambiguous and having way step to drop down to the process so that record regulation set up the claims process to determine how much money he is of god this is sort of a but for world analysis not what what how does that process address co payments that were made t private insurance companies that should have been made what how does that process possibly encompass that could payments have been made to private insurance companies that tri care process that deals with co pays that were made as part of the tri care process not co pays that were made to private insurance companies right yes so in order to have news mr mccourt has been paid for these so we're not disagreeing we're which we agreed with had he been in the service retired and what he did pay in private life the difference was about seven thousand dollars the judge ordered that we didn't contest it there was a nd aspect the so called out of pocket expenses so we had a plan of possible application to the regulations for cry care reimbursement have to do with the situation we're talking about here what regulation says you've got to go and make your claim as part of the tri care system it's part of the that the general principle of damages to prove what is damning the general principle of damages the but good question is what would have been his his costs for medical care had he been in the service we're comparing the damages you've got to go through a try clear claim system and regulation says as to state his claim to state his claim at all he has to establish what the difference would be between the copays let's focus on those that he says that when the government improperly deprives you of tri care coverage and you have to make private insurance co pays that there's an administrative system that you have to exhaust before you get compensated for that well this is a question of los he was owed as a result of the judgment of the federal judge right so now we're back to my original i deal that in order to establish in the but for world his claims would have been different he has to know what would have been paid under tri care so for example if he has these claims dermatology he would have to show it in the but for world if you're going to try care they would have said cosmetic surgery is my example we don't pay for cosmetic surgery so you get zero for that but you won't know that since you look at his plan like he's a member of permissive it is the answer to question as it has a relationship to whether we we send this back not in finding a figure to just right so it's it if it's only mandatory in the sense that if you want your no information list was submitted by mr record that would allow the court to recognize that based on a benefit that he was awarded by the a b c m r that he would have been paid the ten dollars co pay the fifty dollars co pay the on reimbursed expenses whatever it depends on his particular plan and only a claims analyst working for tri care could say based on your healthcare prime plan we would have charged you ten dollars you were charged twenty dollars when you were in private life out of pocket expenses and he's got his data he's got or all the information there the court says i can't decide that you must go back and exhaust you or your mr remedies but yet you can't point to regulation that requires him to to exhaust his his remedies were saying is the court had no way of determining what he would have been so yes he has gross other so he could have decided this issue i could have but he did not so ought to fight back on push back on premise your question or he did not submit all the information to make it a viable claim for damages he would have had to have said i spent the seven thousand dollars or so that he did spend and then make the case that just as he did for is his is his agree with you under this premise the premise your question your honor was he set forth sufficient information to spend whatever i'm saying he did not if you'd set forth the information if you had said i paid this much on the outside to these operations and i could show you were under my tri care plan i would have had only as much and the judge ruled on that we certainly would have asked the judge to to remand for an expert opinion but if she had not we be in no position really to what your point is that he didn't prove his damages which is quite different from exhaustion to fast has already up to and ten thousand dollars to approve a claim or to deny a claim and can and can recommend approval of the claim up to the amount of question twenty five thousand dollars if if they make a recommendation above the initially as for whether to waive or not that's right when's that expected i'm told generally it takes too fast in thirty or so day process once they have a complete claim to determine whether they will this is twenty five thousand dollars or authorities ten thousand dollars so you present to make a recommended or they can deny the admin there was such determination i understand it's not an analyst desk right now they can recommend the full amount be paid to twenty five thousand dollars any denial or a recommendation about ten thousand dollars must go to the defense office of hearing appeals doha they then will if it's a recommendation the act on it i understand they take sometimes up to six months if there is a denial they'll be given an opportunity to mr record to submit briefs against the denial and will then review that appeal so it's likely a number of months in order to resolve a twenty five thousand dollars claims it has to go to a higher level and understand there is a backlog i also understand the doha tries to prioritize cases that are in litigation so how much exactly would take i don't know you know i would expect for the end of the year for sure the explanation of benefits forms which is what the government inter tourney told me they wanted to see and we proffered a calculation the same thing we did with respect to the premiums we proffer documentation and we proffered a calculation they did not object to the ok that the court means incident to an collateral to any such judgment blah blah blah issue an order for correction of a political records and that's what i'm asking the claims court to do to remove correct the records to show  back pay was computed i'm not sure that again this is this that we had jurisdiction because it was a money payment case on the principal claim the principal claim isn't before you the question here is ancillary relief and the statue clearly gives the ok the last thing i want i would like to to mention is it in this is this is just you know the you asked me questions about the waiver i can tell you that the fast doesn't open its mail for thirty days we sent it away for question and july maybe i mean we i mean we the fast does not respond to letters they have i've discovered that when i send them a privacy act release they wouldn't acknowledge me finally got somebody on the phone who told me that they have a special form that they want a point of contact form and if you submit this magical form this form allows the fast to talk back to talk to i mean i've written a number were i just to be the fascinate nort somebody told me oh you have some of this form then they'll talk to you and they do ok and they talk to what the best way to talk to them is through these tickets we put a put a computer ticket in you know like it's like an i t ticket if you haven't done one of those and then they write back to you and you know but as far as the  know it could happen in thirty days you know and my main concern here is the collection machine has been turned on ok and either the what is the collection machine do it uses all the full remedies of the federal debt because you know i feel very bad about this because i did not know about the federal federal management regulations ever practicing a ministry of law for forty five years and d o d really takes the cake when it comes to unpublished regulations i mean i've dealt  with for thirty five years of my life i dealt with the medicaid program so i'm familiar with guidance and i'm familiar with interpretive rules but indeed you did it's like all of it it's on publish and you can't find something if you don't know it exists