Vietnam "burn pit" veteran wins appeal after reporter took action

Vietnam veteran to get his benefits
VA rules on appeal after more than two years
Paul Muschick
The Watchdog
April 6, 2013

I've shown repeatedly how the Department of Veterans Affairs doesn't move swiftly to process veterans' claims for benefits. Maybe veterans would accept that pace if they knew the agency made up for it with accuracy.

Vietnam veteran Matthew Ford had been waiting an inexcusable two years and seven months on his latest appeal for disability benefits when I wrote about his case three weeks ago.

Eight days after that column, the agency granted Ford his benefits, saying a previous denial was "legally erroneous."

"Why didn't you guys catch this in the first place?" said a frustrated Ford, who had been seeking benefits since 1995 for breathing problems he contended were the result of his Army service.

The VA had ruled against him several times. Each time he appealed, and each time his claim was remanded, keeping it alive. That led to his most recent appeal in 2010, which had been languishing without explanation.

The wait ended March 25 when the Board of Veterans' Appeals ruled in his favor.

Veterans law Judge Jeffrey Parker said a previous board decision in 2010 that denied Ford benefits for bronchial asthma "was clearly and unmistakably erroneous."

Parker said the board improperly discredited the opinions of Ford's private physicians, who said his lungs could have been damaged when he burned human waste with gasoline in a camp cleanup detail in Vietnam in 1970.

"They were not supposed to rely on their own VA doctor," said Ford, of Hanover Township, Northampton County. "That is the law, and that is what they did."

Why it took the Board of Veterans' Appeals so long to decide his appeal is one of those Washington mysteries. For five months, his case was unaccounted for somewhere in the system.
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