Veterans Beg Congress Stop Hand Me Down Suffering

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 7, 2015

In 1970 the Guess Who recorded Don't Give Me No Hand Me Down World, but considering what has been happening to veterans, that is exactly what Congress kept giving them. Hand me down suffering because it has all been going on for far too long.

Great article on the New York Times about a Vietnam veteran filing a class action lawsuit over claims. The trouble is, it isn't new for any of our veterans.

This is part of the problem veterans have faced for decades!

“Justice delayed for these veterans is justice denied, unconscionably and unacceptably,” Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the Veterans Affairs Committee, said in an interview Monday.

Blumenthal said he hears it all the time yet when you actually know what has been happening, how long it has been going on, then you'd know this is yet one more politician not being fact checked on anything. The rest of the article is below but here's some things that were left out of it.

VBA's pending compensation and claims backlog stood at 816,211 as of January 2008, up 188,781 since 2004, said Kerry Baker, associate legislative director of the Disabled Veterans of America, during a Wednesday hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

This was reported on Air Force Times GAO faults training for VA claims processors, By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer, Posted : Wednesday May 28, 2008

From September 2007 to May 2008, GAO looked at four VBA regional offices, in Atlanta; Baltimore; Milwaukee; and Portland, Ore.

VA officials said it takes at least two years to properly train disability claims employees, and they must complete 80 hours of training a year. New employees have three weeks of intense classroom training before they begin several months of on-the-job training at their home offices.

Report: 8,763 vets died waiting for benefits reported by William McMichael for Army Times on July 15, 2008 but as this shows, it was worse because of who else was waiting for, and being denied, what other politicians promised when they said they'd take care of our disabled veterans.

It’s estimated there are 600,000 to 800,000 unresolved claims and appeals with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, according to veterans’ advocates.

“We have claims that have been pending for a decade, two decades and some that date back more than 50 years. We have appeals from World War II,” said David E. Autry, a spokesman for the Disabled American Veterans in Washington D.C., which represents veterans and advocates and helps them obtain their benefits.

But it was even worse considering they found many unopened claims.

VA officials acknowledge further credibility problems based on a new report of a previously undisclosed 2007 incident in which workers at a Detroit regional office turned in 16,000 pieces of unprocessed mail and 717 documents turned up in New York in December during amnesty periods in which workers were promised no one would be penalized.

“Veterans have lost trust in VA,” Michael Walcoff, VA’s under secretary for benefits, said at a hearing Tuesday. “That loss of trust is understandable, and winning back that trust will not be easy.”

And after more hearings, promises, pointing finger by members of congress, this was the result of all of that a year later.

The VA's claims backlog, which includes all benefits claims and all appeals at the Veterans Benefits Administration and the Board of Veterans Appeals at VA, was 803,000 on Jan. 5, 2009. The backlog hit 915,000 on May 4, 2009, a staggering 14 percent increase in four months.

There have been too many Congressional hearings without members of congress actually listening to what veterans and families have been going through. Far too many suffering for far too long. In the 90's it took 6 years for my husband's claim to finally be approved.

Maybe now someone will finally ask members of Congress why they are still trying to kill the VA instead of fixing it? But based on the article, it doesn't look as if reporters even fact check what they write so unlikely that will ever happen.

Vietnam Veteran Files Class-Action Lawsuit Over Delayed Appeals on Disability Benefits
New York Times
By DAVE PHILIPPS
APRIL 6, 2015

A Vietnam veteran who has waited years for disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs for claims of post-traumatic stress disorder and exposure to toxic chemicals filed a class-action lawsuit on Monday, seeking to force the department to expedite a growing backlog of benefits claims appeals, including his own.

The case is the first class action filed in the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. The lead plaintiff is Conley Monk Jr., a Marine Corps veteran in Connecticut who said he came under fire in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970 and was exposed to Agent Orange, an herbicide used in the war. After receiving diagnoses in 2011 of PTSD and diabetes, which is sometimes associated with exposure to Agent Orange, Mr. Monk applied for disability compensation from the V.A. and was denied. He appealed in 2013.

Now, 20 months later, the department has yet to respond to the appeal, said the veteran, who recently had a stroke and is living in subsidized housing.

“It’s frustrating to be stuck in limbo,” Mr. Monk, 66, said in a phone interview on Monday. “It’s been hard to make ends meet. And we Vietnam veterans are getting older. We can’t wait forever.”

The backlog of benefits claims at the V.A. started rising sharply in 2009, driven by a growing number of claims by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and expanded eligibility for Vietnam veterans with diabetes and PTSD. The backlog peaked in 2013 with more than 600,000 claims.

Determined to clear the backlog, the Obama administration focused staff members on new claims. Since then the number has declined nearly 70 percent. But the number of appeals — claims resubmitted because veterans say they were improperly handled by the V.A. — has risen 17 percent to an all-time high of nearly 300,000, according to the V.A., and the time it takes to reach a decision has grown.
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