Delayed Benefits Frustrate Veterans

Ronald R. Aument, VA deputy undersecretary for benefits, acknowledged that the department needs to do better, but he rejected the idea that the delays and denials are motivated by money concerns.

"It's not as though we're working on commission here," Aument said. "There is very much a shared passion in this organization in trying to do right by veterans. . . . As far as whether or not we treat people rudely, I would certainly hope that's just an exception as opposed to the rule."

The department fields 7 million phone calls about disability claims each year, he said. Forty-eight percent of the workers who handle claims are veterans. In part, the process is slow so that veterans have time to submit documents and other evidence bolstering their cases, Aument said.

The VA load is getting heavier. Disability-related claims rose to 806,000 in 2006 -- a 39 percent increase from the claims filed in 2000. The workforce handling them grew by 36 percent over the same period, to 7,858 employees. VA officials expect 800,000 new claims this year.

Veterans' disabilities are also growing more complex, with increasing claims for PTSD, diabetes (often tied to herbicide exposure in Vietnam) and multiple ailments. As the veteran population grows older, those who suffer from chronic, progressive conditions -- heart, joint and hearing problems, for example -- file repeat claims, which account for more than half of all claims, VA says.

Earl Armstrong, 87, a former Army technician from Ravenna, Ohio, is a repeat filer.

Armstrong drove an armored vehicle and won a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star while serving under Gen. George Patton in France and Germany in 1944. He suffers from PTSD and persistent ringing in his ears, the latter from the machine gun that was mounted a few feet from his head, he said. The problems have worsened, and for three years Armstrong and his wife have tried to persuade VA to raise his disability rating from 50 percent to 100 percent, which would more than triple the couple's $781 monthly compensation to $2,610.

"I am sick of the VA and the way they've been treating us," Armstrong said. "I can't understand it. There's too many [claims], I guess, and they don't have enough people to handle them."

VA handed out $34.5 billion in disability payments to more than 3.5 million veterans and their survivors last year. Aument said VA has increased its claims workforce by more than 580 people in the past year and plans to hire more than 400 additional staff by June. "The cornerstone of our long-term strategy is to develop more processing capacity," he said.

It is too early to predict whether there will be a "huge surge" of claims from Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, Aument said, and claims for severe disabilities such as lost limbs are those VA can process fastest. Still, some older veterans say their younger counterparts are in for a rude awakening when they apply.

Army veteran Raymond L. Goings, 61, served as a military policeman in Vietnam from 1969 to 1971, an experience that left the Las Vegas resident with PTSD, he said. He praised his VA psychiatrists, but not the regional office that denied the disability claim he has pursued for three years.

"Basically they said I was never being shot at, that the things I told them I saw, I didn't see," said Goings, who has appealed. "They wanted dates and times, even though I tried to explain to them that there are a lot of things about combat that I can't remember."

Jerrel Cook of Joplin, Mo., another Army veteran, breathes with the help of an oxygen tank and suffers from asthma, chronic bronchitis, hearing loss, hypertension and thyroid problems. Cook, 62, blames biological and chemical testing in Alaska while he was stationed there in the mid-1960s. VA has denied his five-year-old disability claim.

"They are playing a waiting game," he said. "It's easier to stall out until the veteran dies rather than to pay his claim. . . . This is ongoing practice with the VA, and it's certainly something that needs to be corrected."