Free VA care for your service-connected condition

If VA has rated a condition as service-connected, VA treats that condition free of charge. That is true at 0%.

What is free

Care related to a VA-rated service-connected disability carries no copay. VA's copay page says so in those words, and it does not add a percentage: visits, tests, procedures and follow-up for the condition itself are covered at 0% as at 50%.

What is not automatically free

Care for anything else, and, depending on your group, medications. Whether you pay a copay for treatment of a condition that is not service-connected is decided by your priority group, and priority groups are where a 0% rating gets complicated:

• A compensable 0% rating (one that pays, which happens when VA combines several 0% conditions) places you in priority group 6.
• A non-compensable 0% rating on its own places you in priority group 8, where enrollment depends on your income and you agree to copays for care that is not for the condition. One sub-group, 8e, is eligible for care of the service-connected condition only.

Medication copays follow the group as well; VA's page waives them outright only for group 1. So a veteran rated 0% for tinnitus pays nothing for the audiology visit, may pay the standard copay for an unrelated visit, and should ask the pharmacy which prescriptions carry a copay before being billed.

Enrolling

You have to be enrolled in VA health care to use any of it. Enrollment is a separate application from the disability claim, and a service-connected rating is one of the things that makes you eligible to apply.

Related

• Getting to those appointments may itself be reimbursed: Travel pay.
• Dental is its own system with its own classes: What a 0% rating does not unlock.
• Back to A 0% VA rating still counts.