How to kill a veteran without really trying

UPDATE 5/2/2010
I'll admit it that after reading the AP piece, I popped my cork. Not so much online but in the privacy of my office. Anyway, another sleepless night thinking about how much harm this can do to the veterans we've been trying to reach since Vietnam. Between this blog and my older one, Screaming In An Empty Room, there are over 20,000 post. On this one alone there are over 9,000. I would be shocked to discover more than 2 percent of the posts were about frauds. I do not bury those stories. I spotlight them because they are causing more problems for real veterans with real claims waiting for their claims to be processed.

There is one thing I beg you to keep in mind and that is the simple fact that it is harder to get them to go for help in the first place, yet we watch them suffer as their lives fall apart when we know they could be healing instead. Don't give up on fighting for them just because someone decided to blame the veterans yet again instead of the system that let them down.

AP: VA Makes It too Easy for Veterans to File Claims … Seriously
May 2, 2010 posted by Michael Leon

By Michael Leon

As PTSD claims soar, the systemic problem at the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs is the ease with which veterans file for disability benefit claims, in the view of Allen Breed, a national writer for the Associated Press. This is a hit job on veterans and the progress being contemplated by some at the DVA to help veterans.

Do you have that? Things are too easy for veterans dealing with the VA now, asserts the AP’s Breed.

Moved by a huge tide of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress, Congress has pressured the Department of Veterans Affairs to settle their disability claims — quickly, humanely, and mostly in the vets’ favor.

Continues Breed in his piece, PTSD cases rise and rules for claims ease, VA warned that more frauds will slip through: “The problem: The system is dysfunctional, an open invitation to fraud. And the VA has proposed changes that could make deception even easier.”

That’s the issue and it’s political.

No deny-delay-and-hope-you-die culture at the DVA, just too many veterans taking advantage of “profitably working the levers of sympathy for the wounded and obligation to the troops, and exploiting the sheer difficulty of nailing a surefire diagnosis of a condition that is notoriously hard to define.”

No years waiting on a claim, it’s the ease with which veterans navigate the system now that is the real issue. This is just crazy.
read more here

VA Makes It too Easy for Veterans to File Claims

Since 1982 it has been nearly impossible to get the PTSD veterans to seek help at all and now this comes out all so familiar. Accusing veterans of making things up for a claim to be approved. Does it happen? Sure it dose and many times you've read it right here on this blog. It does happen but then there are always some unscrupulous people wanting to take what they did not earn or deserve, above all, never paid the price for. Compensation for PTSD is something they would rather not have to even think about when the price is paid by years of nightmares, flashbacks, destroyed relationships, strings of jobs they cannot keep, fractured families and roller coaster emotions out of control. When you think of the fact they are basically dying a slow agonizing death, you begin to understand why they would rather deny they have PTSD than face the fact. It happens all the time.

So, now we arrive at a time and place where PTSD is no longer some dirty little secret the government tries to keep away from the calculations of combat debt and we now see the veterans attacked yet again! So what happens now? How many years does this set us back when so many are finally telling their stories? Generals, majors, servicemen and women, veterans, are all of them now going to be suspected of being frauds because "it's too easy to fake" so they all must be lying? DO THEY EVER STOP TO THINK THAT IT'S THE INFORMATION THAT IS FINALLY GETTING OUT ? Do they ever think it is the fact we've finally gotten to the point where we are killing off the stigma of admitting they need help? Do they ever stop to really think? If they did then they'd also add in to all of this the very simple fact that the redeployments increase the exposure to traumatic events as well as the risk of PTSD deciding to travel back home with a Solider or a Marine on their 5th tour!!!!

Great way to kill off more veterans without really trying.

In tide of new PTSD cases, fear of growing fraud
By ALLEN G. BREED (AP) – 7 hours ago

Moved by a huge tide of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress, Congress has pressured the Department of Veterans Affairs to settle their disability claims — quickly, humanely, and mostly in the vets' favor.

The problem: The system is dysfunctional, an open invitation to fraud. And the VA has proposed changes that could make deception even easier.

PTSD's real but invisible scars can mark clerks and cooks just as easily as they can infantrymen fighting a faceless enemy in these wars without front lines. The VA is seeking to ease the burden of proof to ensure that their claims are processed swiftly.

But at the same time, some undeserving vets have learned how to game the system, profitably working the levers of sympathy for the wounded and obligation to the troops, and exploiting the sheer difficulty of nailing a surefire diagnosis of a condition that is notoriously hard to define.

"The threshold has been lowered. The question is how many people will take advantage of that," said Dr. Dan G. Blazer, a Duke University psychiatrist who has worked with the military on PTSD issues. PTSD, he adds, is "among the easiest (psychiatric) conditions to feign."

Mark Rogers, a longtime claims specialist with the Veterans Benefits Administration, agrees. "I could get 100 percent disability compensation for PTSD for any (honorably discharged) veteran who's willing to lie," said Rogers, a Vietnam-era vet who is now retired. "I just tell him what to say and where to go."
read more here
In tide of new PTSD cases, fear of growing fraud