From 
Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
A Swamped System
When he returned to Georgia from Iraq in 2004, Army Specialist James Webb was in rough shape. He'd barely survived a bomb blast in Fallujah and was left with devastating injuries: brain trauma, spinal cord damage and posttraumatic stress disorder so severe, he contemplated suicide. Needless to say, Webb was in no condition to hold down a job. But although he was entitled to generous veterans' disability payments, he found it almost impossible to get the money. His claim took ten months to process -- more time than his savings would allow."I pretty much was homeless and staying wherever I could," says Webb, who finally moved in with his parents in Tennessee.
Meanwhile, according to an investigation by Scripps Howard News Service, even as Webb was going broke, monthly checks totaling at least $14 million were going out to 120,000 veterans with a somewhat less serious health problem: hemorrhoids. I am not kidding.
What do hemorrhoids have to do with military service? Good question. The answer is that something's way out of whack with our veterans' disability system. Right now, due largely to the Iraq war, some 600,000 disability claims are backlogged, and the average waiting period for processing a veteran's claim is six months. Appealing a denied claim takes an average of nearly two years.
One reason, say experts, is that the disability system is swamped by vets with health problems that are unrelated to their military service. Thanks to lawmakers who have made coverage too broad and, yes, some veterans who push marginal claims, hundreds of thousands of people with problems that doctors consider hereditary or part of the aging process are drawing monthly checks while we struggle to take care of severely disabled people like James Webb.
And the problem is only going to get worse: Soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are expected to make 400,000 new disability claims by the end of 2009. It's time to set some priorities.
"The system should focus on veterans who have left parts of their bodies in foreign lands, veterans with very specific disabilities from their service," says Darryl Kehrer, former staff director for the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Benefits. That was the original intention of the federal government -- to cover soldiers injured in the line of duty who lost earning power when they got home.
Since then, however, members of Congress have courted the vet vote by defining the law much more generously. Now a veteran doesn't have to prove that military service caused his disability, only that it appeared or got worse during his service. So if you develop diabetes while stationed in Germany, you're covered for it, for life. Veterans don't even have to show that the condition has affected their ability to earn a living.
Advertisement 
Your Comments
See all
...
Post your commentCancel