Battling to make sure the veteran keeps fighting to have their claims approved. Battling to make sure the veteran has their disability taken care of and trying to hold onto hope while it is slipping away. Cringing every time the mail comes with bills that cannot be paid. Letting the answering machine pick up all the calls because they are sure it's another bill collector on the other end of the call. Explaining to their kids why they can't go to the movies or they can't buy that toy they have been "dying for" that all their friends have.
What did they do wrong?
806,000 Veterans backlog claims listed in Bush's failures from Center for Public Integrity
Watchdog group: Depth of Bush failures surprised even us
Muriel Kane
Published: Wednesday December 10, 2008
With the Bush administration about to leave office after reaching record-setting disapproval ratings, the nation might be in the mood for some New Year's resolutions pinpointing mistakes of the last eight years that it never, ever wants to make again.
For example, the country might want to do something about its massive backlogs in various essential government functions -- including 730,000 backlogged patent applications, 760,000 Social Security disability claims, and 806,000 Veterans Affairs disability claims.
The nation might also resolve to avoid a recurrence of the recent losses of hundreds of laptops containing sensitive law enforcement information, or to rethink the decision to keep plowing $12.5 billion into a joint civilian-military weather satellite system that is still incomplete and may leave gaps in crucial climate monitoring as older satellites fail.
The most comprehensive guide to these and other Bush administration failures is a new list compiled by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), a non-profit investigative journalism group which recently "set out to document just how off-track things have gone," assigning thirteen reporters to document the worst failures of the last eight years.
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They made the mistake of believing the government would live up to their end of the deal in return for their service, risking their lives, leaving their families and friends, setting aside their own careers and businesses because the nation needed them. It's even worse when the veteran was drafted and forced to go but ended up wounded. Think of how they feel. It wasn't even their decision to go and risk their lives, but they did it under orders.
Obvious physical wounds were easier to prove but not simple if the records were not perfect and in hand when the claim was filed. Then again between losing files and the complaints of shredding claims, even some of those easy claims were trapped.
When it came to wounds and illnesses caused by service, well, those were even harder to prove they were connected to service to the nation. Where else these men and women would be exposed to Agent Orange, Depleted Uranium and the host of illnesses caused by serving in the Gulf War, has never entered into the minds of the people running the office reviewing claims. They say they follow the rules from Congress and Congress has a bad habit of using the "brilliance" of legal terms without knowing how their choice of words will doom veterans.
Case in point is when they decided VA should be able to collect for "non-service connected" treatments. Sounded like a good idea at the time but they never stopped to think about claims that were tied up, on appeal on in the backlog. All of the claims in those cases are considered "non-service connect" BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOT BEEN APPROVED, but Congress never thought about what their choice of words would mean.
This meant the veteran would not only go without compensation checks for their wounds, it also meant they would have to pay to have those wounds treated at the same time they were battling the government to approve the claim that should have been approved in the first place, making the veteran feel as if the VA stands for Veterans Adversary.
For the newer veterans, well they all volunteered to serve. This is what some in this country have to say when they finally acknowledge the fact so many are not receiving the care they were promised. They are trapped in stop-loss, told they will be compensated for it with extra money, the same money Congress demanded be paid to them, but a report came out they are not getting those funds in their pocket.
This is all made worse when the veteran has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, is self-medicating because either they don't know what is wrong with them or when they do, their claim is denied and the cycle begins of appealing the denial, making sure they get that appeal in the hands of the VA before the drop dead date and then waiting, praying and suffering, hoping this time their claim is right and the VA acknowledges the truth about what their own doctors have diagnosed. In those cases, you also see a family falling apart from the added stress of having to fight the government. Try keeping a marriage together under those circumstances when half of all civilian marriages end in divorce. Not an easy task.
So when you read about claims being tied up in the backlog to the count of over 800,000, remember, it's not just a claim, it's the integrity of the government and the nation as a whole. It's veterans and their families, willing to give it all for the nation they are being betrayed by.
Senior Chaplain Kathie "Costos" DiCesare
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.com
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
www.youtube.com/NamGuardianAngel
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington
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