[Southsider2k12]

http://www.jconline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti...NEWS09/70318014

Understaffed VA system slows vets' health claims
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. — A former Indiana National Guardsman injured in Iraq by a roadside bomb in late 2005 now faces a mountain of paperwork to prove that his wound was combat-related.

Steve Foss, who lives in Michigan City with his wife and three children, retired from the military in October after 21 years to work for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

More than a year after being wounded, Foss is now having difficulty proving to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that his wound is related to combat.

In December 2005, body armor saved Foss' life when a roadside bomb detonated in front of his Humvee, sending shrapnel from the explosion into his shoulder and near the base of his neck.

He was rushed to a field hospital just outside of Tal Afar, Iraq, where doctors removed frayed muscle and skin and sent him back to his unit.

Despite that injury, Foss recently received a letter from the VA asking for more documentation after he filed a claim with the VA in November that included all the documents he has from his service record.

"I don't know what else they want. I gave them all the paperwork they gave me at the hospital in Iraq," Foss told the Post-Tribune of Merrillville for a story published Sunday.

Troops like Foss, who finished his service in the Indiana National Guard, have a particularly difficult time. All health records for active duty military personnel go to the national archives in St. Louis.

But files of guardsmen and reservists may be with hospitals or the individual units, wherever they are located around the county, said Jerry Manar, deputy director of national veterans services for the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Foss isn't alone. Many returning wounded veterans have become casualties of an overburdened VA system that hasn't seen a significant number of combat veterans since the mid-1970s.

According to experts and the VA's own data, the system is backlogged and understaffed. Troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan see mounting delays in receiving benefits.

"The Department of Defense is focused on fighting a war and once you can no longer help them fight a war, you drop off of their radar screen," said Manar.

The backlog of case was enormous. As of Monday, the VA had 403,989 cases pending; nearly 30 percent of those cases were more than six months old. The same VA report shows Indiana has 8,436 cases pending, 29.4 percent of them being more than six months old.

Unlike the previous three decades, many of claims are coming from newly wounded soldiers.

In many ways, the VA has lost the funding battle since the war began.

In 2003, Congress deadlocked on a Bush administration request to hire 35 new caseworkers for regional offices. In the current budget, the president has asked for 450 new caseworkers.

The House has increased the request to 1,100 people, though so far the budget has not passed, said Manar, who works with veterans having difficulty with the VA claim process.

VA officials say they are improving as the war goes into its fifth year.

The Defense Department and the VA are working on projects, like merging the patient care at Great Lakes Naval Base north of Chicago, with Hines VA Hospital in Maywood, Ill., said Ryan Steinbach, VA public affairs person for the Great Lakes Region.

"A vet needs to be their own best advocate as much as possible," said Steinbach, who was an Illinois National Guard troop, injured in a 2004 training exercise in Kuwait, as his unit prepared to be deployed to Balad, Iraq.

He said his own experience with VA care was fairly seamless, taking just under four months to complete the paperwork, from when he was released from a military hospital in Fort Knox, Ky.

[Max Main]

I hope the new Congress will undo the last half dozen years of diminishing support for the veterans. maybe if there were any veterans in the Administration it would not be happening.