VA Attacks Own Revised PTSD Rules, Promotes Anti-veteran Dr. Sally Satel

Your Veterans Service Organizations liaison from the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs [the VA] is now promoting the work of Dr. Sally Satel, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

By Michael Leon

This is like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention telling Americans treating the Ebola virus is really a diagnostic and therapeutic "trap;" quote is from Dr. Satel.

Does Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki know or care what anti-veteran nonsense the VA is emitting? How about President Obama?

Long an avowed enemy of Vietnam War veterans, Satal takes direct aim at last year's revised PTSD rules that were hyped by Sec. Shinseki in a well-publiczed op-ed piece (USA Today, July 12, 2010). Writes Satel in a Feb. 1 piece on the AEI site:

The idea that one can sustain an enduring and disabling mental disorder based on anxious anticipation of a traumatic event that never materialized is a radical departure from the clinical--and common-sense--understanding that traumatic stress disorders are caused by events that actually do happen to people.

Sure, the war against veterans at home has been a bipartisan exercise of neglect, but anyone paying any attention to the Bush-Cheney years knows fully well that administration took its key from the AEI on major policy initiatives, and Satel became a leading light of the out-and-out animus towards veterans, especially those Vietnam War guys who smoked all that pot and wore peace signs. Get over it guys is the message by Satel and apparently now the VA and Sec. Shinseki to all veterans with PTSD.

In so many words American veterans, your psychological problems are not the fault of the entire USA. Get it?

Now that the GOP and Tea Party have made public their intention to target the insufficient amount of money now spent on veterans [an ever growing universe of people who served this country unless we can up the suicide rates a few points], one wonders if Sec. Shinseki even knows what's going on in his own office.

Shinseki Fights off Veterans' Enemy Sen. James Webb, Defends Agent Orange Benefits

- Watching C-SPAN 3's telecast of the hearing on VA Disability Compensation, Presumptive Disability Decision-Making by the United States Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs is an illustration why no veteran or advocate in Virginia should consider voting for Sen. James Webb (Traitor-VA) -

This morning, while posturing as the earnest student of empirical investigation, Webb prefaced his hostile line of questioning of witness Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki saying Webb is concerned about protecting the "credibility of our [VA] programs."

I was hoping Shinseki would pull out a can of aerosol composed of dioxin [tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD)] and offer to spray it around the Committee room and see if anyone of the august senators had a presumptive problem with it.

Shinseki and the other witnesses responded politely and on-point, more than the Committee deserved.

"[This hearing] is also about the accuracy of the scientific process as it pertains to the Agent Orange and service in Vietnam. We have struggled with this now for more than 30 years," said Webb.

As if it to illustrate his point of concern about the recent Presumptive Agent Orange Disability rule, Webb asked his assistant to produce a chart (who is also a Marine Webb pointed out) showing that 431,699 additional Vietnam veterans would now be eligible for service-connected benefits because of the expanded Agent Orange VA rules.

You mean Vietnam Veteans will get diability benefits? Horrors.

This piece of wasted space named Sen. James Webb is up for reelection in 2012. Virginia should send him home to his fat military and Senate pensions.

National Gannett Piece knocks VA backlog, errors: 'A Mess'

Here is whopper of a knockdown of Allen Breed's AP piece last month arguing the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) is so incredibly veteran-friendly that the VBA is "open invitation to fraud."

Tristan Hallman in Gannett Newspapers addresses the VBA in the piece, and has Joe Violante, national legislative director of Disabled American Veterans, saying simply and accurately: "(VBA) is a mess."

Either Breed or Violante is way-off; I'm going with Violante's take.

By Tristan Hallman
Gannett Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Retired Marine Sgt. Michael Madden of Prescott knows what it means to battle. In Vietnam, he was shot in the head, forcing him to undergo spinal-cord surgery that has left him in a wheelchair.

But the fight was not over for Madden. After being told by a Veterans Affairs doctor to file for funding to make his home and car wheelchair-adaptable, Madden has spent the past decade in a jungle of bureaucracy, legalese and claim denials.

Over $6,000 of out-of-pocket expenses and a suspended Arizona driver's license later, Madden is still searching for answers.

"I find it kind of ironic that the VA tells me that I can't drive without the equipment, and then tells me that I can't have the equipment for a service-connected disability," Madden said.

Madden is not alone in struggling with the bureaucracy of the Veterans Benefits Administration, the VA sub-agency that handles veterans' disability claims. Seeing the challenges VBA faces, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki has made fighting inefficiency a top priority.

Shinseki's main target is a backlog of claims. As of June 8, a total of 186,777 claims - 35.8 percent of total pending claims - were still unprocessed after VBA's new 125-day processing goal, according to Veterans Affairs.

Not so fast, say some veterans' groups. Joe Violante, national legislative director of Disabled American Veterans, said the backlog is not the problem, but merely a symptom of a bad system - one that produced a 17 percent error rate in the accuracy of claims processing, according to the VBA's internal review. Audits from independent groups have estimated that the error rate is more likely 20 to 30 percent.

Violante said that a single-minded focus on the backlog would only exacerbate that error problem because the culture at VBA emphasizes churning out claims rather than getting them right.

"There is no incentive to do the case right the first time," Violante said. "Right now, it is basically an assembly-line process."

To better serve veterans, Shinseki has set the ambitious goal of an accuracy rate of 98 percent by 2015, but American Legion spokesman Ian C. De Planque said that the bar is still set too low.

"When (the VA is) processing 1 million claims, 1 percent error is 10,000 veterans," De Planque said at a recent House subcommittee hearing. "That is completely unacceptable."

That is not to say there has not been progress at the VBA since Shinseki - himself a veteran who was wounded in Vietnam - took office, Violante and De Planque said. The VBA is trying out pilot projects in an effort to find the best and most efficient ways to handle claims. The agency as a whole is also moving toward electronic filing, and also recently reduced the size of claim forms from 23 pages to 10.

Shinseki has also drafted a bill, the Veteran Benefit Programs Improvement Act of 2010, that is intended to improve efficiency of benefit programs, and has asked for congressional support. The bill also aims to make the appeals process simpler and quicker for veterans whose claims were denied.

But former Army attorney Jason Perry of Connecticut, who has represented some veterans in appeals, said he believes the bill will actually make a veteran's appeal more challenging.

"It doesn't fix what it is trying to fix," Perry said. "It makes it much easier for the VA to deny the claim by basically stripping out the reasons for the decision."

Madden, though, is hoping that his claims will become easier thanks to recently introduced legislation by Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., that adds "loss of use" of a limb, rather than just loss of a limb, into the VA's disability code. The legal technicality that Madden still had use of his legs, albeit very limited, was used to deny his claims for years.

But for other disabled veterans, including those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, the road ahead is still rough.

"(VBA) is a mess," Violante said.

Shinseki, however, will at least be equipped with deeper pockets in the battle. In 2009, VA secured a 16.7 percent budget increase, the department's largest in 30 years, and is seeking another increase in 2011. VA has also moved to provide more access to health care facilities for veterans in rural areas and to more efficiently distribute GI Bill payments to veterans enrolling to college.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/06/20/20100620va-claims0620.html#ixzz0rOwhFFeA