Written by
TONY LEYS
"Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful," Klobnak said this week. "But I didn't want them to fix just mine. I want the system fixed."The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has reinstated Joel Klobnak's disability benefits after a two-year fight and a burst of publicity, but the former Marine knows that hundreds of thousands of veterans are still stuck in disability-claims purgatory.
Klobnak, 24, lost his left leg in Iraq in 2006. He spent six months in an Army hospital, then returned to Iowa with full disability pay. In April 2009, the VA notified him that because he had missed a doctor's appointment, the department was cutting his pay in half, to $1,557 per month. His appeal was snarled in a national paperwork backlog that has forced many disabled veterans to wait years for their benefits. While he waited, he struggled to support a family of four on half pay.
The Greenfield veteran's plight captured attention in June, when The Des Moines Register explained it in a front-page story. He believes the media spotlight, plus pressure from the staff of his congressman, Steve King, helped persuade VA officials to retrieve his case from the pile and to decide late last month to reverse their earlier decision.
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