America's disservice to veterans

DRY RIDGE, Ky. - Like thousands of his fellow veterans of America's wars, Alfred Brown died waiting.

In 1945, when he was a 19-year-old soldier fighting in Italy, shrapnel from an enemy shell ripped into his abdomen. His wounds were so severe that he was twice administered last rites. When Brown came home, the government that had promised to care for its wounded veterans shorted him instead.

Not until 1981 did Brown realize that his monthly disability check didn't cover all his injuries. He launched what would become a 21-year battle.

"As a member of the so-called 'Greatest Generation,' I am well aware of the large numbers of us passing away," he wrote to the nation's chief veterans judge in 2001. "I am prepared to meet our Creator. My fear is that your court will not make a decision in my case."

Brown was right. He died a year later, and his case died with him. As Judge Kenneth Kramer closed the books on the case, he acknowledged that Brown might have been right all along. Had Brown not died, the judge wrote, "I believe that the Court would likely have so held."

Tens of thousands of other veterans have returned from war only to find that they have to fight their own government to win the disability payments they are owed. A Knight Ridder investigation has found that injured soldiers who petition the Department of Veterans Affairs for those payments are often doomed by lengthy delays, hurt by inconsistent rulings and failed by the veterans representatives who try to help them.

The investigation was based on interviews with veterans and their families from around the country and on a review of internal VA documents and computerized databases that had never been released to the public. Many of the records were made available only after Knight Ridder sued the agency in federal court.

The VA serves 25 million veterans with a far-flung health care system and a separate disability and pension operation. The agency spends more than $60 billion a year, more than $20 billion of it on disability compensation.

But the Knight Ridder investigation found that the VA serves neither taxpayers nor veterans well. Some veterans never get what they're due, while antiquated regulations mean that others are paid for disabilities that have little effect on their ability to hold jobs or that aren't related to their military service.

For America's veterans, plus the thousands of soldiers now returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, the investigation identified three points where cases often go wrong: the selection of a special representative, called a veterans service officer; the review by a regional VA office; and the filing of an appeal.

• Many of the VA-accredited experts who help veterans with their cases receive minimal training and rarely undergo tests to ensure their competence. These veterans service officers work for nonprofit organizations such as the American Legion, as well as for states and counties. But their quality is uneven, and that often means the difference between a successful claim and a botched one.

• The VA's network of 57 regional offices produces wildly inconsistent results, which means that a veteran in St. Paul, Minn., for example, is likely to receive different treatment and more-generous disability checks than one in Detroit.

• Veterans face lengthy delays if they appeal the VA's decisions. The average wait is nearly three years, and many veterans wait 10 years for a final ruling. In the past decade, several thousand veterans have died before their cases were resolved, according to an analysis of VA data.

"How a veteran seeking benefits gets treated should not be an accident of geography," said George Basher, the director of the New York State Division of Veterans' Affairs, one of 50 state agencies that help veterans. "Unfortunately, the current system makes that a virtual certainty."

In interviews late last year, then-VA Secretary Anthony Principi and other officials acknowledged many of the agency's shortcomings, but they said things have improved since the Bush administration took over.

"This agency was underwater in 2001," Principi said. "My people have made tremendous progress."

The current secretary, R. James Nicholson, who was sworn in recently, had no comment.

There have been some improvements in the past three years. But when it comes to delays, cases that need to be redone and backlogs, Knight Ridder found that things are the same or worse than they were in the 1990s, when the agency vowed to clean up its act.

For the family of Alfred Brown, that decade brought nothing but frustration. Brown could have collected nearly 45 years of back benefits that, based on VA payment rates, would have totaled about $30,000.

"It wasn't so much the money," said his son Clayton Brown, on a day when he visited his father's grave north of Lexington, Ky. "He felt he was robbed. He almost gave his life up, and this is what he was getting in return?"

VA workers are reminded daily of Abraham Lincoln's pledge "to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan."

The VA makes disability payments for injuries as obvious as an amputated leg and as complex as post-traumatic stress disorder. They include combat wounds and peacetime injuries, since veterans are serving their country whether they're in a Humvee in Iraq or they're at boot camp.

Veterans are given ratings from zero to 100 depending on the severity of their disabilities. Payments for a single veteran range from $108 to $2,299 a month, and they're supposed to reflect lost earning potential.

But according to the Government Accountability Office, the disability payments are based on 60-year-old labor-market assumptions. So veterans who have desk jobs in today's service-and-information economy draw checks based on the assumption that their disabilities are keeping them from doing manufacturing jobs.

The system stems from a time when the cases were often less complex. Today's soldiers are compensated for mental illnesses unacknowledged two generations ago, as well as wounds that often would have been fatal in earlier wars.

Beyond that are tough fiscal realities. The Congressional Budget Office has already indicated that the VA could save significantly if it eliminated new payments for certain ailments not connected to military service. Although most payments can be linked directly to service, veterans can also qualify if they're diagnosed soon after their military service.

The GAO offered one example: A Navy veteran was hospitalized with a heart condition three months after his induction. Although the disease had its inception in childhood, the veteran eventually received disability payments based on the VA's highest rating. In all, the VA pays nearly $1 billion a year for disabilities that the GAO says generally aren't linked to military service.

Applying for disability benefits requires veterans to navigate a labyrinth of bureaucratic rules and unforgiving deadlines. It can require the skill of an investigator and the mind of a physician.

That's why national veterans groups have provided free help for decades. About 40 veterans service organizations, such as the American Legion and Disabled American Veterans, are authorized to handle VA claims, as are many states.

But Knight Ridder found that the training and expertise of VA-accredited service officers vary widely. Contrary to its own regulations, the VA does little to ensure that veterans receive competent representation from veterans service organizations.

Yet the agency prohibits vets from hiring attorneys until after their claims have been denied and they're generally years into the appeals process.

Two-thirds of the veterans who submit claims use service officers, and picking the right one can determine whether they get the full payment they're due, a fraction of it or nothing.

"The best advocates can be very good, and lousy ones can be awful," said Ron Abrams, the joint executive director of the National Veterans Legal Services Program, which trains service officers for the American Legion and other veterans groups.

New evidence from Washington state illustrates the odds veterans face in this service-officer roulette.

Since July 2003, the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs has tracked the outcome of every claim filed by veterans groups that receive state funding. The groups' success rates range from 53 percent to 81 percent. Among the busiest individual service officers -- those handling 30 or more decided claims -- the success rates can range from 35 percent to 98 percent, the state's data show.

The VA, through its national accreditation program, is supposed to ensure that all service officers are "responsible" and "qualified." But the VA program does little more than rubber-stamp names submitted by veterans groups. About 11,000 service officers are on the VA's roster, and about 80 percent of them are accredited through nonprofit groups.

VA regulatory files, obtained after Knight Ridder's lawsuit, reveal that the agency has done little in decades to measure the adequacy of the training provided by veterans groups or to check the quality of the claims prepared by their officers. Only rarely does the VA suspend or revoke a service officer's accreditation. When it does happen, it's generally the result of criminal charges rather than incompetence.

"What we do is take it on the word of the service organization that the individual has had sufficient training," said Martin Sendek of the VA general counsel's office.

That training, however, varies widely, according to a Knight Ridder survey of 13 of the largest veterans groups and the 50 state veterans departments. At one end of the spectrum is Disabled American Veterans, which has full-time paid national service officers and a 16-month training and testing program that's so regimented that it qualifies for 10 hours of college credit.

Groups such as American Ex-Prisoners of War and Catholic War Veterans rely largely on part-time volunteers who aren't required to complete any courses or pass any tests.

"We don't get paid, so we're not going to be that strict with these people," said Doris Jenks, the national training director for American Ex-Prisoners of War.

Nonprofits generally have less-stringent requirements for service officers than do the 33 state veterans agencies that responded to the survey.

Just 62 percent of nonprofits and 73 percent of the state agencies require continuing education for all service officers, something experts consider crucial given the VA's constantly changing rules.

Only 38 percent of nonprofits and 67 percent of state agencies require a test before recommending that the VA accredit a representative. And once accredited, few service officers are ever tested to ensure their competence: Although 27 percent of the state agencies require later testing, only one nonprofit, Disabled American Veterans, had that requirement.

Texas requires continuing education, administers a test before recommending accreditation and mandates follow-up testing.

VA officials bristled at suggestions that their oversight of accredited service officers is lax and said they're unaware of any systemic problems. Retired Vice Adm. Daniel Cooper, the VA's undersecretary for benefits, said the agency fixes any mistakes that service officers might make.

If anything needs to be done to make an application complete, Cooper said, "we do it."

General counsel Tim McClain noted that veterans have extensive appeal rights. "There are a lot of checks and balances in the system," he said.

The Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, however, has repeatedly ruled that veterans are out of luck when they've been steered wrong by VA-accredited service officers.

As the navigator aboard a B-24 bomber during World War II, Corwin survived more than 30 missions over Japanese-controlled waters. He came home to Minneapolis with two Air Medals -- and disabling nightmares and flashbacks.

There were images of his buddies burning in planes that crashed on runways and of a friend killed on a mission that Corwin persuaded him to take. By December 1984, those nightmares began to overwhelm him.

Corwin applied for disability benefits and was denied, in part because the VA couldn't find many of his military records, which had burned in a 1973 fire at a national archive in St. Louis.

So Corwin went to the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs and enlisted the help of Kirk Jones, a service officer who had become VA-accredited a year earlier through his state and the American Legion.

Jones submitted a three-sentence letter on Corwin's behalf and didn't take any steps to prove Corwin's claim. He didn't, for example, push for a psychiatric examination from the VA. He didn't round up statements from Corwin's crew to corroborate that they'd been sent home in May 1945 for "combat fatigue."

"I should have suggested a VA examination," Jones, who is no longer a service officer, said recently. He acknowledged that he'd had minimal training when he first handled Corwin's claim.

In 1995, Jones, who by then had gained extensive experience plus classroom training, restarted Corwin's claim. He did all the things he hadn't done a decade earlier, and more.

This time, Jones helped Corwin win compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder and a heart problem. Jones filed several appeals, and each time the VA granted more benefits, eventually declaring Corwin totally disabled in 1998.

Even so, the veterans court ruled last summer that Corwin can't collect back benefits from 1984 to 1995 because the proper documents weren't filed in 1986 to keep his original claim alive.

"It would mean a home. Let's start with that," said Corwin, 82, who with his wife, Katherine, has been living in a house her family owns in rural Mississippi.

"To have to come back and to fight 20 years to get what you're supposed to be given, and to fight your own government for it, is disappointing," he said.

Even when a service officer does a good job, veterans' claims often get bogged down in the VA's 57 regional offices, where the claims are processed.

In an electronic age, these regional offices are a throwback to an ink-and-paper world. In Waco, one of two regional offices in Texas, the records room is almost the length of a football field, with row after row of file cabinets -- 2,700 in all -- containing records that date back six decades.

Workers wheel massive brown folders around on carts, shifting them from one table to the next as they move through the approval process. In the constant shuffle of paper, things get lost and mistakes are made.

Nationwide, errors are made in 13 percent of claims, more than three times the agency's hoped-for rate of no more than 4 percent, according to a VA quality-control database that reviews a sample of the decisions. That translates to 103,000 errors a year; in many cases, they can result in an overpayment or an underpayment.

"I don't think anybody is proud of the fact that we have" a 13 percent error rate, said Michael Walcoff, who oversees the agency's regional offices.

Errors often trigger appeals, sending thousands of veterans into a cycle of mistakes, appeals, rehearings, mistakes, appeals, rehearings.

In some regional offices, the error rate last year was far worse -- as high as 23 percent in Wilmington, Del. The low was 3 percent in Des Moines, Iowa. The Texas rates were 19 percent at the regional office in Houston and 10 percent at the Waco office.

• The percentage of all types of claims that are approved ranges from 89 percent in St. Paul to less than 70 percent in Jackson, Miss., and Cheyenne, Wyo., according to an annual VA survey of veterans. The Houston office approved 83 percent of the claims; the Waco office granted 74 percent.

• Perhaps not surprisingly, "satisfaction" among veterans is highest in St. Paul, at 73 percent, compared with 50 percent in Atlanta. Houston earned a 60 percent satisfaction rate; Waco's was 55 percent.

Knight Ridder found that disability ratings, which determine the size of a veteran's monthly check, also vary widely.

An analysis of 3.4 million claims shows that major mental ailments, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia, are subject to bigger regional swings than major physical ailments such as bad backs and knees.

For example, veterans with stress disorder assigned to the Wilmington office are more likely to have the highest disability rating than their counterparts in Lincoln, Neb. In Delaware, 34 percent of those with post-traumatic stress disorder have the highest rating; in Lincoln, it's 10 percent.

Diagnosing mental disorders is more subjective, and parts of the country have been slow to recognize them. Different training standards in the past may have also contributed to regional VA differences.

Because the major psychiatric disabilities on average pay more than the major physical ones, the wider swings have a dramatic impact on veterans' payments.

The different ratings may help explain a puzzle noticed by veterans every time the VA releases its annual report: Average disability checks vary by state.

The VA wouldn't comment on Knight Ridder's analysis but said in a statement that it's investigating regional differences, which it attributed to "extremely complex" factors. The agency "is committed to treating every veteran's claim fairly and equitably" and has nationwide training programs to help eliminate uneven treatment, it said.

With the average disability payment now about $8,000 a year, back-benefit awards can be substantial because they can make up for decades of incorrect payments. Some veterans with severe disabilities win $100,000 or more.

But if a veteran dies with his or her case under appeal, the case dies, too. In the past decade, more than 13,700 veterans died while their cases were in the appeals process, according to a Knight Ridder analysis of a VA database.

Although precise estimates aren't available, the VA said experience suggests that a few thousand of them wouldn't have actively pursued their appeals.

Even if a veteran wins a case but dies before receiving payment, his family is often out of luck. Unless the veteran had an eligible spouse or dependent child, the money stays in the Treasury.

The agency goes so far as to take back money it has paid. George Wilkes, a World War II sailor, spent the last five years of his life fighting to increase his disability rating, which stemmed from a spinal-cord injury.

In April 1997, the VA agreed with him and said he was due back benefits of $109,464.

Wilkes, ill with pneumonia, died four days later. Six days after that, the VA wired the money into his bank account.

Once the VA realized that Wilkes had died, it wouldn't let his family keep the money. Although he had no immediate family, Wilkes' nephew and niece had tended to him for years, allowing him to stay in his New Orleans home.

Had the money come years earlier, it "would have had a substantial impact on his life," said nephew Ray Wilkes of Covington, La. "His house was pretty deplorable and was deteriorating. But he was determined to live on his own."

In an October interview, then-Secretary Principi said he was "stung" when he learned a few years ago how common it is for veterans to die with their cases in limbo. While some such cases are inevitable, given the VA's elderly clientele, "it's not acceptable," he said.

He also suggested that a recently formed commission on benefits could reconsider the legal barriers that prevent heirs other than a wife or dependent child from receiving a deceased veteran's back benefits.

The VA has acknowledged that its processes are too slow and too prone to errors. And veterans have told the agency that they suspect the worst: that the agency is "just stalling, waiting for them to die so the claim won't have to be paid," veterans said in focus groups in 1995.

But the agency has repeatedly ignored recommendations to eliminate redundant steps in the process to speed things up. One exhaustive review, completed in 1996, declared the entire claims and appeals process "cumbersome and outmoded" and in need of an overhaul.

Since then, "I think things are basically the same," said the agency's Walcoff. "I wouldn't say that we have changed the system in any major way."

In fact, VA data show that delays and the percentage of cases being sent back for rehearings are basically unchanged since the agency vowed to reduce them.

In the mid-1990s, about the time it promised to speed things up, the VA also denied Berlie Bowman's claim.

Bowman had gone to Vietnam in 1967, an outgoing kid following in his father's military footsteps.

"When he was drafted, he went without a fuss," said his sister Paulette. "He was a different person when he came back."

He was skittish, quick to anger, uneasy in crowds. The family trod warily around him, "learned to wake him from a distance by touching his feet with something," his VA file said. Over three decades, he ran through 30 jobs; he lived in a small mobile home on a curvy North Carolina road.

His first disability claim, in 1971 for "nerves," was denied. His second try, in 1995, met the same fate.

Working with an attorney, he assembled evidence to show that he had post-traumatic stress disorder and to document that it had started in Vietnam.

The case wound up and down the system, receiving six different rulings, until Bowman fell ill with pancreatic cancer.

On June 16, 2004, the Board of Veterans' Appeals finally agreed with Bowman's claim. It declared that "credible supporting evidence" showed that Bowman suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by his time in Vietnam, just as Bowman had contended for nine years.

Bowman's attorney immediately pestered the VA for Bowman's back benefits, dating to 1995. By then, Bowman's cancer treatment had stopped.

On June 21, attorney Dan Krasnegor or his assistant talked with the VA every two hours. On June 22, they were told that the official disability rating was complete and that only final signatures were needed before Bowman's check for $53,784 could be cut.

At his burial, Bowman's mother accepted a smartly folded American flag from the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Seventeen old soldiers stood in formation in the rain.

A bugler played taps; riflemen splintered the silence with three volleys of gunfire.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, with 225,000 employees, serves 25 million veterans and their families. Among federal agencies, only the Department of Defense has more employees. There are 57 regional VA offices.

• The largest integrated health system in the nation, with a network of hospitals, clinics and nursing homes.

• A disability compensation and pension system that gives monthly checks to more than 3 million veterans or their families. Payments are made for injuries as obvious as an amputated leg and as complex as post-traumatic stress disorder. They include combat wounds and peacetime injuries, since veterans are serving their country whether they're in a Humvee in Iraq or they're at boot camp.

SOURCES: Department of Veterans Affairs databases and surveys, Knight Ridder analysis

• Florida's Frank Fong was a fighter pilot in World War II, earning two Distinguished Flying Crosses and eight Air Medals. But it took 47 years for the Department of Veterans Affairs to concede that a plane crash scarred his left eye.

• Richard Gudewicz of suburban Detroit contracted hepatitis C through a blood transfusion in 1974 at an Army hospital in Germany. It took decades before the liver disease was diagnosed, forcing doctors to remove his spleen and give him a series of harsh medications that left him fatigued and unable to keep working as a bricklayer and school custodian. In 2000, the VA denied Gudewicz's claim for disability compensation.

For more on the Department of Veterans Affairs, and to gauge how regional VA offices handled cases and assess error rates and delays, go to www.star-telegram.com.

KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE/BRIAN TIETZ

Clayton Brown of Dry Ridge, Ky., holds a shadow box displaying insignia and awards that belonged to his father, Alfred Brown, who served in the Army. Alfred Brown was gravely injured in World War II and spent decades fighting the government for disability benefits.

About this project
The Knight Ridder investigation into the performance of the Department of Veterans Affairs is based in part on documents and databases that the agency released only after Knight Ridder sued the VA in federal court. Included are documents that reveal the agency's limited efforts to oversee nonprofit veterans service organizations, as well as databases that show how VA regional offices award disability checks at different rates. » More

How DISPICABLE and TRAGIC that we treat our veterans this way.

It is an injustice that many of us have been aware of for years and yet still little changes.

This is one of America's GREATEST SHAMES.

It's the entire way our government (and some citizens) treats our soldiers, where ever they may be. Unbelievable to me in this day and age. And it goes on and on and on........

It's DISGUSTING that it's easier for a no-good serial breeder to GET A WELFARE CHECK than for a veteran who served his country to get the care that was promised him.

Something is TERRIBLY WRONG with this picture, and as always LIBERALISM is to blame.

The real pros at negotiating the mine field of VA regs
and triple thick bureaucracy are in the service organizations

Returning injured Vets and their spouses need to enlist the help of such service organizations as DAV (Disabled American Veterans), MOPH (Military Order of the Purple Heart) AMVETS (American Veterans), VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars), PVA (Paralyzed Veterans of America) etc..

My personal favorites are DAV and PVA...the Service Officers of these organizations are WELL TRAINED in dealing with the VA...and when a disabled service connected veteran goes into a VA claim hearing without one...it is like going into court without a lawyer and letting the DA defend you...

DO NOT let your loved ones (disabled or wounded in combat) go into a VA hearing without a service officer representative

Call DAV or PVA or any others you feel will better represent you...Please...

IMO

No person that enters into the U.S. military should ever entertain the belief that the US government will care for them once they are no longer of use.

To believe otherwise is foolhardy.

Yet another well run government program. Every domestic program they touch turns to chaos.

So what can we do? The programs that help our vets should trump all other social programs.

We give 80 million dollars to NPR every year, and there are many things of that nature that suck up tax dollars. Why can't our congressmen figure out what is important?

"No person that enters into the U.S. military should ever entertain the belief that the US government will care for them once they are no longer of use."

Furthermore lots of those on FR who are gung-ho about sending your children to war are also the ones who see them as malingerers if they are ill in any way needing compensation.

At the same time our Executive branch has been absolutely giddy running around the world with US tax dollars to stuff in the open pocket of anyone at all who wants them.

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