I would like to inform our county veterans of two new issues I have been working on. The first is the United Health Care Patriot Plan. The Medicare Advantage Patriot Plan Open Enrollment began on October 15, 2025 and will be open until December 8, 2025. This years Preferred Provider Organiza-tion (PPO) plan through United Health Care is sponsored by AARP.

To qualify the veteran must be enrolled in VA Health Care or be retired from Active Duty or the National Guard and be on Tricare and be able to receive their prescription drugs through the VA or Tricare.

The premium for this plan is $0. The Patriot Plan is a government funded program offered at no cost to our veterans. There is no prescription drug coverage offered with the plan so you would need to have Medicare Part D or another form of prescription medication insurance to cover those costs such as the VA or Tricare.

The plan offers a variety of savings. It pays back $130 of your Part B Medicare. This amount is added to your Social Security deposit each month. It also gives you $65 per quarter for over-the-counter medications and medical supplies such as aspirin, band aids, shampoo, deodorants, tooth-paste, mouthwash and many more items. You receive a debit card that has the quarterly amount au-tomatically added. It will also pay up to $1000 per year for dental exams, cleaning and fillings. It also provides you with $200 for eyeglasses every two years.

You can call Dave Schelske at 605-660-2743 to have your questions answered or to set up an appointment.

My wife and I have been on this plan for the last year and would definitely recommend you check into it. You can go to a search engine and find out more and if you have any questions, please con-tact me on my cell phone at 605-481-1338.

The second issue I would like to discuss is bilateral hearing loss and tinnitus.

I have been informed by a representative from the Veterans Benefits Administration in Sioux Falls that we should file for hearing loss and tinnitus for soldiers and airmen who served only in the National Guard. In the past, those were not claims we considered filing as those soldiers were only on active duty for training during basic training. However, with the many deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and with border protection and civil disturbance deployments of the National Guard, the VA is apparently taking a different look at hearing issues with Guard soldiers.

I have filed seven claims so far and have been successful on four of those. The others haven’t been rated yet. I have several more that I will be filing soon.

The veteran must have been exposed to loud noise during their time in service. The VA has de-termined that some Military Occupational Specialty (MOS’s) are more likely to cause hearing loss. They have developed a Duty MOS Noise Exposure Listing which rates the noise exposure for each military MOS. The list indicates which MOS’s are highly probable to cause hearing loss and tinnitus. Some of those MOS’s would include mechanics, heavy equipment operators, Airmen working on the flight line, combat engineers, field artillerymen and many more. If you were exposed to noise while in service and have issues with hearing loss or tinnitus, stop in the office or give me a call and I can further explain the details of filing a claim for bilateral hearing loss and tinnitus.

My office hours are from 8:00 to 4:30 the first and third Wednesday of each month at the Armour office and from 8:00 to 4:30 Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday until 12:00 for those days I am not in Armour. My contact numbers are 605-4877691 in Lake Andes and 605-7242750 in Armour. As always, you can reach me on my cell phone at 605-481-1338.