Veterans Crisis Proves the Devil is in the Details

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 12, 2015

As bad as some folks think things are for veterans right now, it is worse when you know the details.

The idiom "the devil is in the detail" refers to a catch or mysterious element hidden in the details, and derives from the earlier phrase "God is in the detail" expressing the idea that whatever one does should be done thoroughly; i.e. details are important.

After Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed the Angels played a dirty trick of leaving out the rest of the news Lot and his daughters needed to know. They thought the rest of the people on earth were also obliterated. Had they known that everyone else was ok, it is really doubtful they would have gotten their elderly father drunk so they could get pregnant by him.
(If anyone leaves out the fact this part of the Bible was about rape instead of consenting gay adults and incest, stop listening.)

Yep, not a great outcome considering the Angels could have filled them in on the rest of the news.

Sometimes folks just can't believe what they hear.

Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier refused to believe the World War II was over.

While most of the Japanese troops on the island withdrew or surrendered in the face of oncoming American forces, Onoda and a few fellow holdouts hid in the jungles, dismissing messages saying the war was over.

For 29 years, he survived on food gathered from the jungle or stolen from local farmers.

After losing his comrades to various circumstances, Onoda was eventually persuaded to come out of hiding in 1974. His former commanding officer traveled to Lubang to see him and tell him he was released from his military duties.

There is always something more to the story and if folks are not made aware of what is real instead of what is imagined, suffering always follows.

When the subject is veterans, it isn't always what you're told that you have to worry about. It is what they don't tell you along with the reason behind the lack of information being shared.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.
Winston Churchill

Everyone is up in arms over the number of claims in the VA belonging to dead veterans. Reporters really pushed that piece of news. Then a veteran decided to buy some billboards declaring the VA is Lying and Veterans Are Dying but it seems that he was never told none of it was new.

What reporters left out is the simple fact that claims do not have to end with the death of a veteran.  Families can in fact keep the claims process going.

Dependents Indemnity Compensation Benefits Dependency and indemnity compensation (DIC) benefits are for survivors of service members who were killed on active duty and for survivors of veterans who died from service-connected disabilities or had a 100% disability rating for a period of time before death. If your veteran spouse passed away while his or her claim for disability compensation benefits was pending, and the claim is approved, you may be entitled to the accrued disability benefits (back payments) that are due to your deceased veteran (more on this below). But you won’t receive ongoing disability compensation payments; instead you may be eligible for dependents indemnity compensation (DIC) benefits.

While it would have made things easier for veterans to know the rest of the story, no one told them. 

Just like no one told them that claims don't stop unless the veteran gives up on filing appeals.

A WWII veteran finally had his claim approved after 60 years! The New York Times reported on a story back in 2012 that shows exactly how long this process can take along with showing that nothing happening on the VA story is new.

"In a case as much about government bungling as one man’s perseverance, the Department of Veterans Affairs said last week that it would end years of litigation and repay Mr. MacKlem, 88, for six decades’ worth of disputed disability compensation, about $400,000."

The other piece of news in this article shows what the claims backlog was like for far too long.

"Of the 850,000 disability claims currently pending before the department, more than 35,000, or 4 percent, are from World War II veterans."

If you are reading a news report being passed off as any kind of breaking news and they don't mention something like this, stop listening and go out to discover the truth about what they are not telling you.

But another story out of the Chicago Times in 2005 showed another case of a veteran waiting for his claim to be approved.

Joseph "Bernie" Daugherty suffered burns across his body, two broken arms and a broken jaw. Daugherty, who served in the Navy from 1959 to 1969, still struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The 63-year-old Granite City, Ill., man has received some compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs--as little as 10 percent for diminished "work capacity" and 100 percent the last few years. He wants full compensation back to 1969, which could total $500,000 or more, but Daugherty says, "The horrors that I've gone through over the years are unbelievable."

His request for retroactive disability was sent back to the Chicago office in 1998, the first of several times it has been remanded for further review, and he is still waiting for an answer. Remands, as the VA calls them, are claims that have been appealed by veterans and, because of the validity of some portion, require additional evaluation.

The VA's backlog of remands is vast, hobbling an already slow-moving system. A claim can take months or years before it gets remanded, and then those cases sent back to the VA's Chicago regional office sit an average of 20 months.

The Chicago office, which ranked near the bottom of the nation in disability reimbursements, is being investigated by the VA's inspector general's office. The inspector general is expected to issue a report this month explaining why Illinois veterans routinely get less compensation, as reported in the Chicago Sun-Times.

In addition to compensation rates, Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) recently discussed the remand quagmire with VA Secretary Jim Nicholson. Obama said he expects the inspector general's report will address the issue.

"We have a problem at the front end in which claims aren't processed quickly enough," Obama said. "We have a problem with the results of claims after they're processed. ... And then we have a problem in which the backlog for remands is worse than the national average and an unacceptable number of days."

AMVETS did this press release

VA Claims Backlogs Vary Widely, Depending on Where You Live Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Montgomery, Ala., have some of the longest VA claims backlogs in the country. But Washington, D.C., is the worst, with 6 out of 10 claims taking more than six months to resolve, says

In 2007 when Nicholson appeared before Congress for the final time, this was reported by the Washington Post.

Nicholson, who took office in early 2005, also pointed to persistent problems between the Pentagon and his department in coordinating care for veterans and urged Congress to embrace proposals by a presidential commission to fix gaps.

"They have some very good ideas in there," he said.

Nicholson yesterday expressed sympathy for injured veterans who might have unfairly suffered as a result of unnecessary red tape. "We have learned that, in many instances, we were not as sensitive to those needs as we could have been -- and we have tried to adjust, while at the same time caring for veterans of different wars and different eras," he said in prepared remarks. "My heart has gone out to service members or veterans who seem to have slipped through the cracks."

Hmm, so as you can see clearly now, it isn't what they tell you you have to worry about. It is what they don't remind you of that leaves veterans in an endless cycle of suffering after you stop wondering what the rest of the story really is.

If you are upset about how many veterans commit suicide every year and believe the rumor it is 22 a Day, then you are not being told the simple fact that veterans outnumber civilian suicides 2 to 1 as a whole. But even that isn't the worst news. Most of them are over the age of 50, failed by each session of Congress promising to be more "sensitive" and fix what hasn't worked.

Wait because the truth gets worse as you breakdown the demographics more.

Younger veterans commit suicide 3 to 1 compared to their civilian peers.

Yep even worse when they studied female veterans. For them it is 6 to 1 but then when they looked at younger female veterans, it is 12 to 1.

These numbers are not new and remained unchanged after all the news reporters have long since forgotten about telling you the rest of the story you really should have known to avoid the crisis veterans have faced for decades amounting to one of the worst sins of all. We let them suffer and die.