When requiring Military benefits? Never Give Up!

Now here is some political madness for ya.

WASHINGTON — The first time the Vietnam veteran filed his disability claim, he got nothing.

The second time, he got nearly $500,000.

I've heard it said, everyone is denied every time, on the first try. Just to discourage the cranks and freeloaders. I don't think that's quite true in practice, but I'm betting the overall impact isn't that far from it....

Earlier this month, VA officials announced a year’s worth of retroactive benefits for any veterans submitting Fully Developed Claims, a streamlined filing process designed to ensure that raters have as much documentation as possible before starting their work.

The department also encouraged veterans to work with service organizations before filing any claims, a suggestion that has rankled some who feel they’re shifting the burden of work to the disabled veterans.

This may actually carry some importance for current vets to take a look at. If refiling for everyone with valid issues may be of some help, it can't hurt to look into.

In terms of what this benefit claim is specifically for? Well..it's something they sure waited long enough to start making right for. They've waited until a good number of men who needed it, died never having seen it.

In the case of the $500,000 payout, the veteran sought out help from the VFW to refile his disability claim. Back in 1996, he petitioned VA raters for disability pay because of exposure to Agent Orange during his Vietnam tour, but was denied because his Ischemic heart disease was not on the list of injuries presumed to be service-connected.

He had open heart surgery and eventually a heart transplant. The operations made him largely unemployable, which caused significant financial hardship.

Source: Stars and Stripes

Better later than never though, eh? A few years back was when I first heard about the Agent Orange benefits being extended to those men who served aboard ships that spent time close in to the shorelines or among the brown water Navy.

Anyway, for those with no contact to the Military world and it's odd ways ...this is a story of some side interest to how wacky it can be as well as arbitrary. For those with connections or personal ties to that time or the VA? It may be a story worth a moment's consideration, if nothing else. A legitimate claim long abandoned may be worth exploring again on some of these issues.

The way this nation treats its vets IS SHAMEFUL.

We send them to kill based on lies, and when they face long term problems from that we abandon them.

Support the troops, bring them all home and never send them to war on a Lie ever again.

I sure don't know about better late than never.
A friend of mine is a Vietnam vet. He has been waiting over a year and a half. They have a special needs granddaughter that they adopted. They are struggling so bad right now, just to keep their home. I cannot believe the run around this family has gotten.

It really isn't fair, for those that really need it, and most certainly have earned it!

Originally posted by chiefsmom
I sure don't know about better late than never.
A friend of mine is a Vietnam vet. He has been waiting over a year and a half. They have a special needs granddaughter that they adapted. They are struggling so bad right now, just to keep their home. I cannot believe the run around this family has gotten.

It really isn't fair, for those that really need it, and most certainly have earned it!

My best friends dad growing up was struggling with PTSD from Vietnam, he was the only one of his platoon to survive the war, he had constant nightmares.

To this day he has never been able to get the proper benefits out of the Government, he has had to use private insurance and such for coverage.

Ive sent him this link to this article.

reply to post by wrabbit2000


I wrote a thread on the whole fiasco that was the Agent Orange saga up here a few years ago...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

It has changed somewhat in the years since that thread but not much. Many vets and their families are stil fighting for compensation for their exposure to AO.

Governments are negligent to the point of criminality towards vets for the most part. They ask that you be willing to sacrifice your life in service than when you're done and damaged because of that service and look for some help or compensation, they ask for your life again, except this time, it's them that's taking it from you, not an enemy on a foreign battlefield. This battlefield is on home soil and the enemy is the people who hired you in the first place.

Bastards.

Everyone of them, upon being elected to office, should be required to serve a year in the service, if they haven't in the past, in a role that is on par with the grunts they send to do their dirty work. If they are to old, one of their kids should have to take their place. Let's see how fast those scumbags are to throw people's lives away when theirs or one of their kids could be in harms way.

My father, a WW II vet, applied for a disability, being already disabled from his postwar career, and having had PTSD, which kept him out of active service in the Korean conflict. His was denied, and told that his records had burned up in a fire at a Federal Archive (in Saint Louis, I think). He eventually applied again, under the Freedom of Information Act, and got his disability, a cash settlement retroactive to the date he had first applied, and ALL of the records he was told had burnt. In those records were yellow tabs, and he was told by someone that they had been put there during the review process, and that meant that the bureaucrats KNEW the records existed all along. If you have fathers/grandfathers who are veterans, share this information: the FOIA is your friend.

When I am at the VA I tend to talk with a lot of Vietnam Vets and the way they have been treated is by far worse than my generation of veterans are. Don't get me wrong we still face our challenges when it comes to claims but, what those guys experienced and the conditions they were met with when returning from Nam were and still are sickening. I have actually helped a few Nam vets who just did not know where to start.

It is a very complicated process. The Compensation and Pension department that does the evaluations for your disability claims at VA medical centers are not there to help you with benefits. They are there to deny as much of it as they can to save the government money. That is the mentality of the upper echelon within the VA. You really need an outside advocate to file a claim and actually have it approved. The DAV, VFW, Purple Heart, American Legion and many more are out there to help veterans go through the process of filing claims. There are service officers nationwide and most vets can find one that is close to home.

The situation with the nations veterans is horrible right now and will only continue to worsen as more and more return home.

reply to post by wrabbit2000


As much as I bitch about people enlisting, the old school vets have my deepest respect. Talk about being in the wrong place in the wrong time and still pulling through... only to get your ass handed to you by the government and citizens when you return. Shameful.

Maybe you should start a non-profit, acting as an advocate for them that educates them on how to get benefits. There are a lot of homeless old vets that don't have a freakin' clue that they could be living a better life.