Veterans' Claims for Benefits Delayed By Crushing VA Backlog
William Kasten's disability claim has languished at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Oakland Regional Office for more than 700 days. But the Livermore man is more concerned with another number: $140. That is the sum of his family's savings.
Kasten suffers debilitating back pain and depression stemming from his Coast Guard service and can no longer work. He has lost two homes to foreclosure and had a car repossessed -- all while waiting for help from a VA bureaucracy drowning in red tape.
He is caught in a crushing backlog of claims affecting veterans of all generations, but falling most heavily on post-9/11 vets who are returning to civilian life with physical and mental disabilities.
"This is just a national scandal," said Kasten, 56, who is married with three children. "It is unbelievable."
Bay Area representatives Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, and Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, are holding a "fix-it" event Friday in San Francisco to help bring attention to what everyone agrees is a crisis.
The VA acknowledges that there are slightly more than 800,000 pending claims clogging its 58 regional offices with an average wait time of 273 days before a claim is processed. But the Center for Investigative Reporting, citing internal VA documents, found last month that those veterans face wait times that can be twice as long.
The Oakland office, which serves Northern California veterans and has more than 30,000 claims pending, was singled out as being among the nation's worst with a wait period of 618 days for initial claims.
"This is the biggest issue facing new veterans that's preventing them from transitioning on to civilian life -- getting health care and compensation for injuries they suffered, " said Ann Weeby, 32, who served in Iraq and now is an advocate with the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Commission. "They fought for their country. They shouldn't have to fight for their benefits."
VA Secretary Eric Shinseki told the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs this week that his agency will fix the backlog by 2015. That pronouncement was met with skepticism.
"There's a disconnect between the people in Washington who say they're working on it and vets who tell us every day that they're struggling," said Paul Rieckhoff, founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "What are vets supposed to do between now and 2015? Call up Eric Shinseki and have him pay your bills? Until then, you're in purgatory, and it's wrong."
Attempts to reach Oakland VA director Douglas Bragg for comment were unsuccessful.
Delays have grown despite the addition of more staff and the ongoing rollout of a $537 million computer system that has yet to lessen the VA's reliance on paper records. And the problem could get worse: An estimated 1 million service members are expected to become veterans in the next five years.
Shinseki said this week the agency is dealing with an unprecedented number of claims from veterans involving mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Also, veterans who served in Vietnam and the Gulf War are filing new claims now that the VA has added to its list of diseases exposure to Agent Orange and other conditions that previous administrations had dismissed.
Dottie Guy suffered an ankle injury in basic training and aggravated it while serving in the military police in Iraq. She's had reconstructive surgery, wears a brace, has constant pain and has waited more than two years on her claim.
"On one hand, this is definitely small potatoes (compared) to people who have limbs blown off," said Guy, 31, who also is a member of the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Commission. "But I'm in chronic pain. What I really want is the acknowledgment that I was hurt serving my country and that I deserve proper care without waiting months for treatment."
Army veteran John Williams, of San Jose, said he suffers from peripheral neuropathy connected to Agent Orange exposure. He waited nearly 500 days before learning last August his claim had been denied. An appeal now is pending.
"I'm losing the feeling in my feet," said Williams, 66, recently retired from a career in construction. "It's very frustrating. I feel like I'm back where I was -- no communication."
Kasten has begun to wonder if his case is beyond fixing. His Coast Guard career took him around the world, including serving at Prince William Sound in Alaska after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and in Moscow, where he met his Chinese-born wife, Anli. He was injured in Panama in 1995 as part of a counterdrug mission when he was thrown headfirst into the bulkhead of a cigarette boat, leaving him with chronic severe back pain.
After retiring in 2009, it took 11 months before the VA rated him 40 percent disabled, which was below what he needs to receive benefits beyond his pension. He has since filed a series of appeals -- the oldest of which has been pending for 733 days.
VA officials often seem to have no idea where his records are and communicating with them "just eats at my soul," Kasten said. When he asked to speed up the process, Kasten said he was told by a VA worker: "I don't see any reason why yours should be expedited. Lots of veterans are having financial trouble."
That is unacceptable, Rieckhoff said.
"As you're waiting at the Oakland office 618 days, the bills are piling up," he said. "The marital problems increase. The mental health issues increase. These are the faces of bureaucratic failure."
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