A grey area of funding gained clarity last week when President Obama signed into law a measure that will ensure a steady budget for veterans' health care.  The Veterans Health Care and Budget Reform and Transparency Act will ensure "sufficient and predictable" annual funding for veterans health care.  Government spending for the Veterans Affairs Department up to this point has been subject to budget approval debates, resulting in funding delays.  In fact, for 20 of the past 23 years, Congressional approval of veterans health care budget has been late.

In a 6-3 ruling handed down today, the Supreme Court scolded a federal appeals court that essentially got too friendly in its treatment of certain veterans disability benefits claims.

The ruling dealt with cases brought by two veterans, Woodrow Sanders and Patricia Simmons, whose benefits claims were denied by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The veterans had argued that the VA mishandled certain notices it was required to give them under federal law. The law at issue, the Veterans Claims Assistance Act (VCAA), is a law which was passed in 2000 to improve the manner in which the VA assists veterans claiming benefits, and which also set out some basic notice requirements for the VA. At the bottom of this dispute is how mistakes made by the VA regarding notices to veterans are to be treated by courts.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had ruled in favor of Sanders in one of the cases, indicating that the system set up by the Veterans Court to review claims of notice error: