VA alienating generation, disabled vets warn

[Gimpy]

VA alienating generation, disabled vets warn

Long claims delays, perceived unfairness cited

By Rick Maze - Navy Times Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Mar 21, 2007 10:44:18 EDT

Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are warning Congress that a new generation of disabled veterans feels shortchanged by the government because of delays in processing claims and a sense of unfairness in how services and benefits are provided.

Brady Van Engelen, a wounded Iraq war veteran and associate director of Veterans for America, said veterans and their families suffer because the VA simply isn?t fast enough in processing claims.

?We may end up with an entire generation of veterans who have no faith in our VA because those running it ? as well as those overseeing it ? were unable to hold up their end of the bargain,? he said.

?We did not prepare for this, and it is painfully evident,? Van Engelen told the House Veterans? Affairs disability assistance subcommittee. ?My generation is going to have to pay for this ?… for years and years.?

Those views have captured the attention of Congress.

?One thing is certain. If we do not fix this problem now, our legacy will be an intolerable backlog regrettably endured by this generation of veterans, and inexcusably bequeathed to a future generation,? said Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., senior subcommittee Republican.

?We are failing a crucial test here,? added Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif, chairman of the full veterans? affairs committee.

VA officials admitted at the hearing that despite years of effort, the backlog of disability claims is growing, not shrinking.

Ronald Aument, VA deputy undersecretary for benefits, said processing a disability claim under the best of circumstances takes an average of four months, and that priority is being given to claims for the most severely disabled combat veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The average processing time is 177 days, which the VA wants to cut to about 145 days, he said.

The VA handled 774,000 claims last year but received 806,382. The number of veterans receiving disability benefits has climbed from about 2.3 million in 2000 to 2.7 million in 2006.

Patrick Campbell, an Iraq war veteran and legislative director for the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said the VA also has problems delivering services.

?VA has grossly underestimated the demand for their services, once again,? he said. ?The soldiers are coming home, and they will be asking for care. The question we must be asking ourselves is: Will we be ready for them??

There is no excuse for making combat veterans wait for help, Campbell said, noting the VA?s own standards call for a veteran to be seen within 45 days.

?For veterans coming home, especially with mental health issues, a month is like an eternity,? he said. ?The standard should be two weeks, or at least broken down into categories.?

Distrusting the VA

Steve Robinson, a 1991 Persian Gulf War veteran and former Army Ranger who is the Veterans for America?s director of veterans affairs, said new veterans have trouble trusting the VA.

?Many veterans do not receive their benefits in a timely and accurate manner,? said Robinson, calling the claims backlog ?a disgrace? that adds to other failures such as a lack of prompt health care.

Another Iraq war veteran, Jon Stoltz, said the situation is akin to what veterans saw after the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War.

?If you talked to any veteran of Vietnam or the Gulf War, they will tell you there were serious capacity issues with the VA before Iraq and Afghanistan,? said Stoltz, the co-founder and chairman of VoteVets.org. ?Since the start of the wars, the Bush administration has failed to adequately increase resources for the VA to meet the need.?

A Harvard University professor told the subcommittee she recommends an overhaul that would automatically pay disability compensation to any war veteran who applies.

Linda Bilmes of Harvard?s Kennedy School of Government, who is studying veterans? health care and disability benefits, said the current backlog of about 600,000 claims has overwhelmed an already slow system.

And, she said, things are likely to get worse. She predicts 250,000 to 400,000 claims will be filed in the next two years by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, creating a situation that she said ?will rapidly turn the disability claims problem into a crisis.?

She proposed that the VA ?should accept and pay all disability claims? filed by Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, taking ?at face value? statements from veterans that they have service-connected disabilities. Because 88 percent of disability claims are approved anyway, Bilmes said that some spot-checking and audits are enough to ensure the system is fair.

She also proposed changing the disability rating system, which now ranks disability between zero percent and 100 percent in increments of 10 percentage points, to one that used only four ratings: zero, low, medium or high disability.

?This would immediately streamline the process, reduce discrepancies between regions and likely cut the number of appeals,? she said.

The VA?s solution to reducing the backlog of claims is hiring more claims processors, an idea the House committee generally has endorsed. In fact, Democrats and Republicans on the committee have suggested the hiring of an additional 1,000 VA claims adjudicators, on top of the roughly 500 more recommended by the Bush administration.


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And the beat goes on, another generation of war veterans getting the shaft just like our generation!


The republicans, so fast to claim the mantra of the party of "Support The Troops" claim it because they are willing to give big bucks to defense contractors for "outsourcing"
and "privatization", and all kinds of whiz-bango hi-tech battlefield crap that never comes in either on time or at the prices that were bid. They are not the party of supporting the VA or the families of National Guard or even regular enlisted men and women who are left to work other jobs while stateside to support their families or perhaps get food-stamps or other public assistance to make ends meet.

During the early days of the war, while the Bush Bunglers Crew was telling us all how Saddam was connected to Al Quaida, and that we had 'fight them over there ..blah blah blah" they were actually taking money away from the VA health care system to pay their rich benefactors off in tax cuts. Now that the 'past due bill' is coming due, and we have senior Pentagon officials telling us that paying for VA care "takes money away from National Defense". Are we getting the picture now, four years later? In what way do republicans give a shit about troops?

[Packo]

Great Article Gimpy!

With 52 Regional Offices, at least, that's about 20 Adjudicators per office. Sounds reasonable. Hope they don't do what the VA did when the Vet Centers first opened. The only requirement was that you be a Vietnam Vet. No clinical skills necessary. They did that so the program would fail. It didn't due to the dilagence of the qualified Vets that were hired. It was also a requirement that Adjudicators COULD NOT BE VETERANS. Is that still a VA requirement? They said that basically Vets would be prejudice. Well, they must have hired former Hippies due to the way Vietnam Vets were treated. I could call a spade a spade if I'd been in ajudication. A phony claim is a phony claim. Let's hope all this happens and we start paying Doctors and Nurses more so they will WANT to FLOCK to get jobs at the VA. I know at one hospital, the Medical Chief of Staff, the head doc, had been sued so many times in private practice he was hiding out at the VA and actually lived there. Lets make is attractive for young docs, good ol' experienced Docs, nurses, etc.

Pack

[Gimpy]

Originally posted by Paco Great Article Gimpy!

Lets make is attractive for young docs, good ol' experienced Docs, nurses, etc.
Pack

I think you hit the nail right on the head brother!


Until the VA and this government wakes up to the fact that they MUST have a salary & benefits package for physicians and medical professionals comparable to the marketplace, we will continue to get a some 'marginal' or 'undesireble' physicans with medical degrees from places like Bum Phucked Egypt and other wonderful medical capitals of the world.