Vietnam Veteran Told Permanent and Total Disability Not So Much

Sick Vietnam veteran sick over VA's contradictions
McCall.com
Paul Muschick
November 8, 2014

Peg Smedley wouldn't have retired five years ago if she didn't have it in writing that the government considered her to be totally and permanently disabled from her military service during the Vietnam War.

At the time, the Department of Veterans Affairs considered her to be 100 percent disabled from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, caused by exposure to Agent Orange.

Those monthly benefits were enough to cover her expenses, so Smedley decided it was time to end her nursing career.

She was living comfortably until last December, when the VA told her it proposed to reduce her disability rating to only 10 percent, which would cut her benefits substantially. Smedley feared she could lose her Allentown home. She didn't understand how the government could do that, considering what it previously had told her.

"I retired thinking my benefits were permanent," she told me. "That's what permanent means."

The VA's poor and slow handling of benefits is a permanent source of aggravation for veterans. Smedley's beef is one of several I've investigated recently.

"I just cannot even fathom that they would make these huge mistakes and change someone's life so dramatically and not even care," Smedley told me last month.

I spoke with the VA on Thursday, and it acknowledged sending her incorrect information about the status of her benefits. The good news is the agency won't be reducing her benefits and has made them permanent, this time for real. The bad news is that happened because Smedley's doctor told the VA she'll battle cancer for the rest of her life.
read more here