VA Issues, Part V: “We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us.”

(Part 5 of a series. Part 1 can be found here; part 2, here; part 3, here; part 4, here).

Maybe my previous articles haven’t p!ssed you off yet. If not, I guess I’m not trying hard enough. (smile)

However, if the previous articles haven’t made you angry . . . keep reading.  I’m guessing this one just might.

Why?  Because now I’m going to discuss us vets. As a group, our hands are far from clean.

If fact, collectively we are part of the problem. And we are part of the problem in at least 3 different ways.

No, not all of us. But enough of us that we vets as a group IMO indeed bear some of the responsibility for the current VA mess.

Here’s why.

The First Way:  Fraudulent or Exaggerated Claims

Some vets exaggerate – or outright lie through their teeth. That’s contributed to the VA’s current issues in several ways.

First, the obvious: some vets lie about what they did, and use those lies – sometimes along with forged documents – to get VA benefits they simply don’t deserve. (Hell, in some cases they don’t appear to have ever even served in the military, but have conned the VA into granting them benefits anyway.)  We’ve seen many examples of this kind of lie here at TAH.

Others simply exaggerate their “injuries”, or file claims for conditions that are easily faked but hard to disprove. (“Lower back pain” and PTSD come immediately to mind, but they’re hardly the only such easily-faked conditions.)  A fair number of such specious claims get approved by “easy” VA rating officials.

Both of those types of dishonesty hurt, in multiple ways. First (and most obviously): false or exaggerated claims steal money from Uncle Sam – money that could otherwise be used to hire additional claims processors or medical personnel, extend facility operating hours, lower copayments, or otherwise provide services of benefits to deserving vets. Or it could be returned to the US Treasury to help reduce the deficit (which would also benefit vets over the long by keeping the US government financially more stable, thus helping assure continuation of future benefits).

There’s another way fake and exaggerated claims hurts: they clog the system. More people to be served with a fixed-size staff means less time per person served – for everything – along with longer waits. I’m guessing this is a big part of why the VA takes so damn long to do anything.

Finally – and least obviously – such fake claims and stories affect the perceptions and attitudes of non-vets. Constantly hearing stores (some number of which are IMO fake or exaggerated) about PTSD, close combat, service-connected injuries and conditions, etc . . . , that have “messed up” veterans has two distinct effects on public opinion.

First:  those non-vets who are easily swayed (and gullible) will think that all vets are “messed up”, and need “help”. They’ll thus support additional VA services (e.g., more money) that aren’t legitimately needed – in order to “help those poor unfortunate vets who can’t help themselves”.  Take this too far (and IMO we already have), and this simply invites more fraud.

On the other hand, the cynics among non-vets will see that many such claims are obvious bullsh!t.  They’ll begin pigeonholing vets as a group as dishonest whiners too lazy to make it on their own and looking for a “gravy train” to ride.

Obviously neither of these perceptions is true. As a group vets are neither broken losers nor whiners looking for a gravy train.  But sometimes perception is as important as reality, if not more so.

The Second Way: We Vets Lobby. Bigtime. And Effectively.

Quick question: how many formally-recognized, nationwide Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs) are there? Five? Ten? Twenty?

Yeah, right. By my count, try over one hundred fourty (I get 144, but I only counted the list once) that are formally recognized by the VA. Plus God only knows how many more “informal” or “unofficial” ones.

To be recognized as a VSO by the VA, the entities “must be a Non-Profit that are (sic) National in scope, of good reputation, in existence and involved with Veterans for a minimum of three years, dedicated to a wide range of Veteran’s issues with a membership of at least 1,000 or be Congressionally recognized.”  So we’re not talking some club formed by a dozen guys in a bar when we’re talking about recognized VSOs.  We’re talking about organizations that are nationwide in scope, with 1,000 members or Congressional support, and which are going concerns.

So, what do these organizations do? They help vets, right? They provide support, assist with paperwork, and other such things to help vets “get what’s coming to them”?

Yeah, they do that. I’d guess maybe that’s about 10% of what they do.

What do they do the rest of the time? IMO, mostly “They provide a voice for veterans on veterans’ issues.”

Let me translate that: bluntly, they’re lobbyists.  They lobby Congress and the public. Why?  They try to “build more support” (i.e., get more $$$) for veterans programs, or to get new benefits approved.

And they do a pretty damn good job of that lobbying, too. Look no further than the recent changes (2009) regarding Agent Orange becoming a presumptive exposure for those serving in Vietnam or along the Korean DMZ (1968-1971 only). Yeah, that took a while – and it took having a Vietnam vet as VA Secretary to make that happen. But if you don’t think lobbying by VSOs played a huge part in making that happen, you’re fooling yourself.

That’s hardly the only case. The VA has established a Gulf War Registry along the same lines for “environmental exposure” conditions related to service in the Persian Gulf region from 2 August 1990 until, well, now. My guess is that a sh!tload more stuff will fairly soon become “presumptive” for service in that region, too – whether or not requisite exposure can be documented or causation is ever scientifically demonstrated. A few conditions already have been so recognized.

Bottom line: VSOs lobby like hell for more benefits (and $$$) for vets across the board. It’s what they exist to do.

And we vets support the hell out of them. Because, well, “We deserve it, dammit!”

The Third Way: We Work the System, Because, Well, “We Deserve It, Dammit!”

Here’s an excerpt of a comment I ran across recently at TAH. I won’t ID the writer.

“This just strikes a nerve with me! When WE return home from a WAR it’s really just the beginning! This is when WE need the most help! WE should NEVER be turned away!! Never be put on a waiting list !!! We shouldn’t have to fill out b.s. paper work or claims!! All thi(sic) should be done (happily) for US!”

Let me translate that into what many non-vets see/hear when reading the above:

“I’m a vet, so Uncle Sam owes me. He should take care of me. I deserve it, dammit!”

There’s some truth there. And it is indeed true about the specific case about which the individual who wrote the comment was referencing. In that particular case, the VA miserably failed the individual in question, leading to his untimely death.

But that kind of statement also points out what I see as a larger problem. IMO, we vets – as a group – have fallen to some extent into the same “I/me/mine/you owe me/gimme” mentality that has become pervasive in the US over the past 30 to 40 years. We expect – no, we demand – that Uncle Sugar “take care of us”.

As a group, we vets “work the system” bigtime to make that happen.  And we do that in ways far beyond merely supporting VSOs and their lobbying efforts on our behalf.

Vets leaving the service today are filing VA claims at historically unprecedented rates. The rate of military personnel leaving the service filing a VA claim has risen from 21% in the early 1990s to 45% in 2012.

Yeah, that loads the system a bit.  But it’s not just claims from younger, Iraq/Afghanistan vets that are clogging the system. Those 2.5 million Iraq/Afghanistan vets filed only about 20% of VA claims that were pending last year. Another 8% weren’t clearly identified as to the vet’s era.

Who filed the other 72% of VA claims pending in 2013? Vietnam, Gulf War, and Peacetime vets. (Additional details to accompany the linked graphic are found in this article.) In fact, more claims were pending that had been filed by vets of both Vietnam (37%) and the Gulf War (24%) in 2013 than claims that had been filed by vets of Iraq/Afghanistan.

Older vets today are also filing additional claims and requests for reexamination and re-rating at historically unprecedented rates. And the increase really began to spike in 2009 with the announcement of presumptive Agent Orange exposure for Vietnam and the Korean DMZ.

In spite of IAVA and others’ claims, it isn’t just the “young vets” from Iraq and Afghanistan who are clogging the system with their claims and getting “screwed” as a result, though they are indeed part of the issue. Their claims are only a relatively small part of the huge increase in VA claims recent years.

There’s also the whole “presumptive” issue.  There are a sh!tload of conditions that the VA regards as presumptively connected to herbicide exposure (e.g., Agent Orange and other types of herbicides) – including heart disease, respiratory cancers, prostate cancer, various forms of leukemia, type II diabetes, and many others.  The VA has now decided that anyone who ever set foot in Vietnam (or a whole bunch of other places) is now “presumed” to have been exposed – whether or not there’s any evidence they actually were.  So guess who’s going to pay for treatment for those presumptive conditions for anyone who ever set foot in Vietnam (1962-1975) or offshore, or Thailand, or served near the Korean DMZ (1968-1971)?

You got it: the VA. Or in other words, the US taxpayer.

You and me.

Oh, and as I noted above the VA has already established a Gulf War registry and a few presumptive conditions for anyone who served in the Persian Gulf, too.  So it looks like this expansion of presumptive eligibility isn’t going to stay unique to Vietnam.  Stand by for multiple future rounds of lobbying for this type of expanded ‘presumptive coverage” for conditions someone thinks might be associated with service in the Persian Gulf or Central Asia.

Why? IMO, that answer should be kinda obvious. There’s money to be had – either directly (in terms of increased compensation) or indirectly (in terms of additional free medical care and avoiding having to buy private health insurance). Couple that with an increased, “We deserve it, dammit!” mentality, and the result is quite predictable.

In some respects, Pogo was right. Collectively, IMO we vets are indeed part of the problem too.

. . .

That’s it for the first part of this series.  Don’t like what I’ve said?  Take aim, and fire away.

That’s OK. That shows you’re aware of and thinking about the problem.

The VA today is seriously broken; it well may be FUBAR.  Continuing as-is today is simply not a viable option.

But some of what the VA does is absolutely needed.  So if possible, we need to figure out how to un-FUBAR it.

I’ll have some thoughts on what we might do to start un-FUBARing the VA at a future date – hopefully, soon.  They might be good ideas, or they might be unworkable.  But I’m willing to throw them out there for discussion.

 

 

Category: Veterans Issues, Veterans' Affairs Department