https://themilitant.com/2018/09/08/veterans-fight-delays-in-govt-disability-benefits/
Veterans fight delays in gov’t disability benefits
Thousands die while appeals drag on and on
By Brian Williams
Vol. 82/No. 34
September 17, 2018
Wounded war veterans who get physical therapy wait at Brook Army Medical
Center, San Antonio, Texas, in 2007. Veterans Administration has denied
benefits to half a million veterans.
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
Wounded war veterans who get physical therapy wait at Brook Army Medical
Center, San Antonio, Texas, in 2007. Veterans Administration has denied
benefits to half a million veterans.
Hundreds of thousands of veterans filing disability claim appeals wait
years, and sometimes a lifetime, for the Department of Veterans Affairs
to rule on their cases. One in 14 veterans dies before getting a
decision — or any badly needed help, according to the Government
Accountability Office.
With improvements in surgical techniques and body armor, a much higher
number of soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan are surviving
improvised bomb attacks that in the past would have been fatal.
“They’re being kept alive at unprecedented rates,” David Cifu, a VA
rehabilitation doctor, told Associated Press. “More than 95 percent of
troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived.”
These veterans return from multiple tours of duty with a much greater
number of injuries than in previous wars and find a bureaucratic
Veterans Affairs system placing all kinds of obstacles in the way of
getting medical care and benefits. Some 45 percent of veterans who
served in Iraq and Afghanistan have filed for disability benefits,
double the rate from the Gulf War in the early 1990s.
The Department of Veterans Affairs pays out more than $78 billion each
year to nearly 5 million people. But nearly 500,000 have been denied
benefits.
The disability filing process is complex. Veterans with multiple
injuries — those injured in Iraq and Afghanistan each have an average of
about eight — must get a separate investigation and ruling on each one.
Do they really exist, were they caused by military service? And as
rulings on claims stall for years, or sometimes decades, medical
conditions may worsen and then a new round of documentation has to be
presented.
In 2017, more than 90,000 cases were appealed to the VA board and 57
percent of them not approved, according to VA statistics. Given this
cumbersome process “a lot of veterans don’t appeal,” or get discouraged
through this process, Bart Stichman, executive director of the National
Veterans Legal Services Program, told the Wall Street Journal.
Errors made by the VA have led to hundreds of thousands of appeals. This
has resulted in nearly half of cases being sent back by the Board of
Veterans Appeals for “fixes,” and more waiting time with no benefits.
In April, a federal Court of Appeals overturned a 19-year-old decision
that said veterans had to have a discrete and clear medical diagnosis
connected to any pain they are suffering to be eligible for disability
payments. This decision was the basis for rejecting at least 11,000 VA
claims, the Military Times reported.
The case was brought by National Veterans Legal Services Program on
behalf of Army veteran Melba Saunders, who served in the first Gulf War.
She injured her knees during seven years of service. When she applied
for disability benefits her claim was denied, with the Board of Veterans
Appeals citing this previous court case that held that “pain alone is
not a disability for the purpose of VA disability compensation.”
“The new court ruling erases that precedent, at least for now,” noted
the Times. “Veterans still need to show a clear connection between their
pain and their military service to be eligible, but would no longer have
to have a specific medical reason for the pain to apply for benefits.”
As of August there were some 238,000 appeals caught up in the system,
the VA admits. The department projects processing about 80,000 this year.
The same horrendous situation exists for civilians applying for Social
Security disability from disease or old injuries. Here the bureaucratic
red tape is stretched even longer. First you file your application.
Recent Social Security Administration statistics show only 21 percent of
applications are approved. This figure has been falling for a decade or
so. If you are denied and don’t give up, then you have to file for
reconsideration. The approval rate on reconsideration has fallen to 2
percent.
If you’re still kicking, and still haven’t given up, then you can file
for a disability hearing, ususally a 20-minute affair. The approval rate
at these hearings improved by a mere 11 percent. You do a lot better if
you can hire an attorney. The average time to go through these three
stages is two to three years. All in all, no matter how you try, the
overall approval rate is just 34 percent.
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •‘Advance the revolutionary mobilization of workers’
•Veterans fight delays in gov’t disability benefits
•SWP: We need independent working-class political action
•Steelworkers at ArcelorMittal, US Steel protest concession demands
•Liberals disrupt Senate hearing in furor over Trump nomination
•Protest ‘Militant’ censorship by Florida, federal prison officials!
Feature Articles •Grenada Day participants hunger for revolutionary books
Also In This Issue •Indonesia: Teen jailed for abortion wins her freedom
•California protest demands ‘End solitary confinement!’
•Free Ukraine director on hunger strike from Siberia jail!
•Washington state teachers strike over pay, conditions
On the Picket Line •New Zealand bus drivers walk out over low pay, safety
Books of the Month •The history of the belated, bloody birth of US
imperialism
25, 50 and 75 years ago
Letters
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