Thousands of veterans lose health benefits because of paperwork errors

Thousands of veterans lose health benefits because of paperwork errors

Correcting mistakes in discharge documents can be a bureaucratic nightmare

By Lou Michel NEWS STAFF REPORTER



Christopher M. Simmance helped keep the peace as an American soldier in the Middle East, but when he returned home and later suffered a breakdown, he was turned away from the VA hospital because the government didn’t acknowledge his overseas duty.

Dana Cushing as a Marine served two tours of duty in Iraq and a third in east Africa, but when she returned home, she found herself labeled a “conscientious objector” and also was denied medical care by the government.

Simmance is one local veteran among roughly 2,000 across the country trying to get corrected incomplete or inadequate discharge papers. Cushing only recently got hers corrected after trying for a year. The result is that many now face a bureaucratic nightmare that prevents them from getting the health benefits they are entitled to receive.


The Army alone has a backlog of 1,890 veterans seeking corrections on their discharge papers, and some have been waiting for three years, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. Many other veterans probably have faulty discharge papers but don’t know it because they have not sought benefits.

Efforts are being made to speed up the corrections on faulty discharge papers, Army officials said.

But it can’t come quick enough for Simmance, the City of Tonawanda Army veteran who ended up broke and homeless late last year after he suffered service-related psychological problems and was unable to get help because of his faulty discharge paper.
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http://www.vawatchdog.org/08/nf08/nfFEB08/nf022508-3.htm

Sadly it's still happening. During Vietnam, they had the excuse of typed errors. My husband came home in 1971 with a Bronze Star Award. It had an error in his social security number. There were several documents he was given with the wrong number typed in. Most of the time they were not important documents but other times they were very important. Because his MOS had him listed as a clerk, his claim depended on the Bronze Star Award. With the wrong number on it and showing up as standing out on his DD214, it came into being questioned. While we were fighting the VA to have his claim approved, we lost our tax refunds and he felt as if he had a knife in his back because the VA doctor told him he needed the VA to treat him at the same time they were making him pay for it. Our private health insurance company would no longer cover mental health with private doctors because the VA doctor linked it to Vietnam. Once the award and orders were corrected, his claim was approved soon after.

The problem is that between the time he received it and the time they fixed it, he went through hell. I lost count how many people reminded us that once his claim was approved, we would get back the money they received along with retroactive pay, but they didn't tell us how to pay our bills while all of this was going on. This is also one of the biggest reasons I try to support the homeless veterans shelters as much as possible. He almost ended up homeless and I almost ended up living back home with my Mom with our daughter. Yes, it got that bad. We managed to make three forbearance agreements with the mortgage company in the six years we fought them. That saved our house from foreclosure.

If you have someone in the military right now, make sure they have all their paper work and keep it in a safe place. Make sure all the forms have the right social security number on it and if it doesn't make sure they fix it and hand back a corrected form. With computers, it shouldn't be that hard to do. Make sure they hang onto every document they are given and toss nothing out. You cannot trust that the DOD will keep every record and have them all right. There is human error. Don't go through what Vietnam veterans did. You cannot assume it will all work out fine.