VA Dental Treatment And Agent Orange

Most Vietnam veterans were exposed to Agent Orange in some form.
I had rashes on my upper arms for years after returning from Vietnam,
and for years I wore long sleeve shirts to cover the rashes. It was probably
some form of Chloracne, and it did finally go away.

A Question From The Latest S-2 Report Newsletter

My friend is a temporary 100% from the VA for Agent Orange related cancer. The treatments have caused problems with his teeth according to a civilian doctor, but the VA won’t treat him because temporary 100% veterans do not rate dental treatment. What can he do?

  This is from the Code of Federal Regulations. He should be entitled under section g below. The problem is an outside doctor diagnosed the problem as caused by his treatment. If this is a doctor the VA sent him to, it's not a problem, but if it's a civilian, he would have to go through a service organization and request a determination from the VA and I would also file for unemployability.

  It is a Catch 22 because they may try to wait him out like they do with most people, and he obviously doesn't have the time while in treatment. As it turned out, a VA doctor also diagnosed the dental problem as being related to the service-connected cancer treatment. I would file the claim for dental treatment and unemployability because of a service-connected condition.

   He could also go to the VA outpatient clinic and tell them he is in pain from his teeth due to his cancer treatments. If they diagnose it right there he should be eligible right away. I would try this first. Now, since I’ve learned that VA doctors are involved, the VA is for sure violating their own laws. But as in many cases, adjudicators are willing to wait a veteran out to save money.

  The seriously ill veteran or his spouse or representative should  make sure  he signs all paperwork relevant to the claim. If he dies from the service-connected condition, this is no problem because his spouse or dependent children will be able to keep the claim open.. If he dies from a condition not yet service-connected or not yet proven to be secondary to the service-connected condition, this can be a problem if the paperwork is not signed.

Authority: 38 U.S.C. 1712)
(g) Class III. Those having a dental condition professionally determined to be aggravating disability from an associated service-connected condition or disability may be authorized dental treatment for only those dental conditions which, in sound professional judgment, are having a direct and material detrimental effect upon the associated basic condition or disability.

(h) Class IV. Those whose service-connected disabilities are rated at 100% by schedular evaluation or who are entitled to the 100% rate by reason of individual unemployability may be authorized any needed dental treatment.

  Veterans and their reps and family members must treat the VA as an adversary during the claim process. The VA often says the claim process is not adversarial, but it is and they will turn a veteran down or stall the claim when possible.

  I don’t know why people like the blind Chinese guy several months back can be brought to this country and instantly given food, housing, and money for his entire family because they are persecuted by their government...but veterans who lay their life on the line for this country are treated like unwanted guests when they have  a physical injury.

  I truly believe the VA has many dedicated employees at the medical centers who do everything they can for veterans. My problem has always been with the adjudication system, which is only going to get worse. The White House always strips funding from the VA one way or another, and there is no way any claim should take over 800 days, especially when a veteran is critical.

(The S-2 Report Newsletter has been printed bi-monthly since 1994 to help veterans deal with the VA. If you would like more info about the newsletter contact Dennis Latham at ysgazelle@gmail.com)


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PTSD: I Like To Think I'm Normal, but...

How could any combat veteran ever imagine the problems we would deal with later?

I like to think I’m normal, but then if I have to go out in public, I realize I’m not normal. My wife knows if we go into a restaurant I have to keep my back to the wall. I’m also not very good in traffic, and most times would inflict harm on people who are aggressive in traffic (cut me off or tailgate) if I could get my hands on them. I guess a lot of people feel like that, but I would do it. I’ve never been the kind to threaten or argue with strangers. I attack when threatened. That’s one reason I don’t like to go to large stadiums or other public places where I can be exposed to potential threats. I can’t stand crowds where I have no control. That’s also the reason I never drink anymore. I have to keep iron control of my emotions and anger. I’m also a fanatic on perimeter security in my home. I’m always the last to go to bed, and the first to get up. I have a weapon within reach if needed, and I probably wouldn’t sleep much at all if I didn’t have a dog to take up my slack.

I still never sleep more than two to fours hours at a time. I never just wake up. I jump out of bed fully alert. That drives my wife and visiting family members crazy because they don’t understand how I can be instantly awake. I don’t understand how people can be so unconcerned or trusting when it comes to their own security.

Any treeline takes me right back to Vietnam as I try to figure what kind of ambush I could be walking into, how to get out of it, or how I would construct an ambush. Helicopters will make me freeze when they pass over, and war memories flood my thoughts.

I have a lot of nightmares. Most times I don’t remember them or they wake me up. There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t think of the war or my dead friends. I try to keep any depression in check by exercise, though I’ve never been able to quit smoking. I tried a quit smoking group at the VA, but it reminded me too much of rap groups or AA meetings and I never went back after one session. My few friends are Nam vets or other vets I’ve known since childhood. I pretty much remain isolated all the time, and I have never felt comfortable at any job unless it involved helping combat veterans. I have never felt any remorse for anything I saw and did in Vietnam. I never hurt women and children, and everyone I dealt with was an enemy. If anything, I would like to meet some former VC or NVA so we could go at it again. That could possibly give me some form of closure because I still despise them.

I like to feel that I’m a friendly, outgoing person, but others (those who were never in the military) see me as full of rage and I don’t understand how I present myself as being full of rage. My behavior is normal for me. (That’s why it sometimes takes so long for veterans to realize something is wrong.)

I believe a lot of my rage is from dealing with a system that puts combat vets through such hell to obtain benefits. Last night on the news I watched our money rebuilding Iraq. Somebody (Iraqi) comes and asks for money and we give it to them for a business while back home our veterans have to fight to get anything.

It all feeds the rage. I often feel I should have just died in the war and that I could have done more while I was there. I feel guilty for being alive and I feel helpless that I can’t turn things all the way around for myself and others. I know the PTSD will never go away, but I also know that I’ve helped a lot of combat veterans survive to make it this far.

So we all continue to walk a fine line and try to cope the best we can as we live with PTSD.

(Since I've written this article, I did manage to quit smoking after 48 years, and I've been in therapy for my PTSD, as I have been off and on since 1981. I have seen some positive changes, but the PTSD is something that will never go away. All we can do is learn to live with it.)

A PTSD Novel: Michael In Hell

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PTSD Higher Percentage

Paper Viet Cong flag taken from pocket of dead VC in Street Without Joy 1967

Obtaining The Higher Percentage

   I have received many letters from veterans who have received service connection for PTSD, and who are not happy with their percentage. They want to know what to do next. The next step is the appeal, but this can be totally confusing to a veteran who doesn’t have knowledge of how the system works. Ben Franklin said there were two sure things: death and taxes. If he lived today, he would probably add one more: anything involving money and a Federal Agency is going to be complicated...this is a fact of life.

   The appeal is almost automatic anymore. You get a percentage and you appeal to the Regional Office for a higher percentage. If you don’t have additional evidence to offer at this point, the appeal will probably be pointless.  But any current statements from doctors or from another agency such as Social Security (if it already has not been submitted) can be used.

   If the Regional Office turns you down on the disagreement, the next step is an appeal to the BVA (Board of Veterans Appeals). The Regional Office will send you a Statement of the Case including VA Form 9. The statement of case will show your evidence and the reason you were denied an  increase or service connection. This is when you file a Substantive Appeal on the VA Form 9. You should clearly state the benefit you are after (increase in PTSD percentage), and the mistakes you think the VA made in turning you down. You can also use this form to request a personal hearing before the BVA.

  (A hearing is best because you can actually tell a person what is wrong instead of doing everything through the mail).

   If you are turned down by the BVA, you may re-open the claim with new evidence. Or, if it is a matter of law, not diagnosis, then you can appeal to the Veterans Court Of Appeals.

   With PTSD, percentage ratings of 10% to 30% are common on the initial claim. If you disagree with your percentage at the Regional Office level, the odds are good that you will be turned down for an increase. This is because the RO usually does not change a rating no matter what the new evidence. Maybe because they  can get the claim out of their office by letting you appeal to the BVA.

   Since a lot of the PTSD rating stems from your ability to support yourself, veterans who have managed to hold one job for years often suffer when being evaluated for ratings. (I call it being punished for managing to survive a work place).

   I know veterans who have held one job for many years, on a day to day basis. Meaning they just barely hang on, even though they have severe PTSD. They are often miserable, depressed, and ready to explode, but they hang on because they are the sole support of their families and they are survivors. Many have to work alone in complete isolation or are in constant struggles with management due to PTSD. But because they haven’t exploded yet, the rating board often concludes that they operate on no more that a 30% disability level. These veterans should hang tough and work through the entire appeal process.

   Even if you have managed to hold one job, but must be isolated, meaning you can only function while working alone, this would probably  make you eligible for a 50% rating.

   With PTSD, the appeal process can work if the veteran can wait it out without giving up. The main point (95% of the battle) is getting the VA to admit you have PTSD from war. Once that is established you can use the appeal process to obtain a higher percentage. In many cases, it becomes a long, drawn out process, but can be worth the wait because you will win in the end.

 

 

(from the S-2 Report)

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Three Brief Notes About PTSD Claims

Marines of BLT 1/3 USS Iwo Jima December 1967

 

The VA PTSD Claim Process

  A Comp Exam must cover your war issues or it is invalid and you may request another exam.

  If the doctor sees you for five minutes and blows you off without probing the issues that are causing your PTSD, this is an invalid Comp Exam and cannot be used to determine service connection. If you would get turned down on the claim, immediately disagree because of an Invalid Comp Exam and request another one.

   Remember the “Reasonable Doubt Clause”.

  If you say an event happened, but you can’t prove it by service records (occurs often), and the VA can’t prove it didn’t happen, they can’t just call you a liar. They must give you the benefit of the doubt and rule in your favor.

   Combat PTSD is a well-grounded claim.

  You may often hear that a claim must be well-grounded before it can be considered. If you were in combat and have the PTSD symptoms, this is an automatic well-grounded claim. Don’t let anyone tell you different. You also don’t need a diagnosis of PTSD to open the claim. You can open a claim at any time, then be diagnosed.

 

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The Stressor Letter: After Your War

What Happened After Your War

    Proof of combat in the stressor letter is important in obtaining a disability rating for PTSD, especially if service records are incomplete or lost. The combat shows that you have had trauma beyond the normal range of human life. Showing combat stressors is enough to obtain the service connection .

    But what really determines the rating percentage is the part of the stressor letter which I call After Your War. It is here that you record the symptoms of PTSD which have changed  your life since the war.  And it is here that your actual percentage is figured, based on your ability to support yourself when compared to non-veteran peers. This can be difficult because many veterans, in addition to blocking out horrible experiences, do not realize that many of their adverse behavior patterns and thoughts are directly related to war.

     For example(a short version):  I grew up in a tough Cincinnati neighborhood called Northside, I belonged to the Upper Northside gang, a loose knit group with about 15-20  members. We fought other gangs, and never went out of our own neighborhood unless in a group.  Your reputation was based on how good you could fist fight. Fifteen of us went into the military. Six were killed and four wounded. Vietnam virtually destroyed the group we once had.

    Upon returning from the war, I dropped back into the same style of living and fighting with the survivors of the group. We never talked about the war or those who were killed. But I had started carrying a gun. I would pull it out and fire it when threatened by strangers, usually when I was drunk and meaner than hell. If the person was a stranger, I didn’t care what I did to them. (I stopped carrying the gun for awhile after I almost shot a woman during a fight when six of us were attacked by about 30 people). I picked up a reputation of being crazy. Many people I had known for years were suddenly afraid of me. I came back to a job at the Post Office, but I was wild and couldn’t take orders anymore. I quit after four months. I couldn’t sleep except in two hour shifts. My mother used to look at me and cry because she didn’t know me anymore. She said I was cold and showed no emotion.

    I got married because most of my friends did. The marriage lasted three years and I had over 30 jobs during that time. My jobs always ended the same: me attacking the boss or telling the boss off.

    I jumped all over the country, singing in a band. No one ever knew that I was a Marine Vietnam veteran. In 1977, my mother died, and I didn’t feel any emotion. In 1978, I returned to Cincinnati after living in Atlanta with some psycho woman who I thought might kill me in my sleep. It seemed that I was always putting myself in situations where I could be under stress and live on the edge.

    That day in 1978 when I came home, I had nine cents, no car,  and a gun. At age 31, I didn’t even have a dime or a future. And I kept thinking about my best friend who was killed on July 4, 1968 in an ambush where I should have died, too. He was a better man than me. Why did he die and I live when I had no future? I had failed at everything I tried. I sat on a hill looking out over my old neighborhood, crying and holding the gun to my head. All my friends were gone. I felt like an old, lonely, useless man. I decided right then that if I did kill myself that Vietnam had me, too. I couldn’t let that happen.

    A few months later my father died. Once again, I didn’t feel any emotion. Death was like the rain in Vietnam. It happened and you lived with it. I married again in 1981. I slept with a loaded gun, and my wife said that I tried to strangle her in my sleep and kept calling her a gook. We couldn’t go to fireworks or stadiums, loud noises would put me on the ground, and I had no friends I could trust.

    Still, I accepted all this as normal behavior for me, and felt that I was the only one in the world who acted this way. The marriage lasted two years. I finally went to a Veterans Outreach Center because I had heard that I could find mercenary work there. I wanted to die in combat, I guess.

    The counselor handed me a booklet with symptoms of PTSD, and I went into shock. It described me. I couldn’t believe it. All those years, I thought it was just me. I didn’t know that what I had been experiencing was typical for other combat vets. I joined group therapy for five years, filing a claim in 1986. It was approved from my stressor letter and service records: first 30%, then 50% on appeal, primarily due to my work record and how I acted or may tend to react.

    This is why I tell veterans to take their time composing the stressor letter. The very act of writing it can bring terror by just remembering some of the things we have done since the war. For most combat veterans, combat stressors are a matter easily proved by service records.

    After The War can be as horrible as recalling combat because we have finally accepted that something isn’t right. It can also be part of the healing process, and a step toward controlling PTSD. We can’t change the past, but we can learn to control what we do in the future.

 

 

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CUE...Errors In Applying The Law

With so many VA claims, (CUE) clear and unmistakeable errors in the law happen all the time.

 

CUE

  CUE means the VA did something in your claim which is a clear violation of their own laws. One example can be when a veteran files a claim, the claim remains open until they adjudicate it.

  Many times, the claim will sit in a file for years before someone gets around to deciding the issues. Once in a great while, a veteran will submit a claim, and nothing will ever be done about it. Years later, the veteran may submit a new claim for the same disability. If the VA grants the claim, the effective date of the award should be the date of the old claim, not the new one.

  This applies only to claims that were never adjudicated. If the VA did anything in the way of rejecting the claim, then it has been adjudicated. I often suggest to every veteran to save every letter or piece of paper they receive from the VA. That way, if you do file for the same disability years after you haven’t heard about an original claim, you have the proof in hand. If you don’t save your paper work, the VA may say you never filed, and you wont be able to prove that you did.

  This situation is really not a mistake in the law, but a mistake in applying the law because they didn’t adjudicate your claim. In another case, a veteran was rated at 70% for PTSD and filed for unemployability based on the fact that he couldn’t work. Voc Rehab had turned him down for training, and he was on medication. The VA denied him the 100% rating because they said his isolation from society (typical among vets with PTSD) was self-imposed.

  The Code of Federal Regulations doesn’t say anything about self-imposed isolation, as far as I know. The only way you couldn’t have self-imposed isolation is if you were in prison in solitary confinement. The VA never mentioned anything about his inability to work or anything about his work history. The total isolation and withdrawal from society due to PTSD rates 100%.

  Not only did the VA violate the law by not examining him for his ability to work, they made up some fiction about his isolation. This is really grabbing at straws on their part, and is a clear violation of their own laws. This claim went to the Veterans Court of Appeals, and was remanded back to the Regional Office to be fixed. It had been going on since 1989. In the end, the veteran was granted 100% going back to 1989. He ended up getting somewhere around 60,000 in back pay.

  CUE can be hard to prove, but your service organization will probably be able to spot clear violations in the law, and follow up with you. If the service organization offers to take the case to the Veterans Court of Appeals, you probably have a good chance because they wont take a case they don’t think they can win.

  Any veteran rated at 70% for PTSD should file for unemployability when they can’t work.

   If you’re not sure about CUE in your claim, ask someone who knows the law. And never give up!

 

 PTSD Novel: MIchael In Hell and other Dennis Latham Books

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Regional Office Claims



This is a leaflet dropped from a plane in the Street Without Joy in late 1967. I picked one of them up after the plane
dropped them on a village. I'm not sure what it says but I figure it had something to do with what a good life the VC would
have if they surrendered.

Regional Office Claims

  A veteran lawyer gives this advice: "As a rule always try to deal with your claim at the REGIONAL LEVEL!!! Most claims that get up to the Board of Veterans Appeals are there for years and then are simply remanded BACK to the Regional Level anyway! "

  I figure this lawyer doesn’t have much experience on dealing with VA claims, so I disagree with the above statement.

  The Regional Office will almost always never change a decision against a veteran. You can disagree at the Regional Office level and months later get turned down again. The BVA will order the changes to fix the mistakes the Regional Office makes and then remand it back to the Regional Office for them to fix those mistakes. This will take time again that many older veterans don't need to waste.

  Because there are so many mistakes by the Regional Offices, it often takes a long time to get a BVA hearing. But if you have a legit claim, the BVA will almost always catch the mistake and order it to be fixed, if you were wronged by the Regional Office.

  My advice is if you are turned down by the Regional Office for a claim or an increase on a current disability, immediately appeal to the BVA. Skip the Regional Office. They will probably not change the original decision. You may several months or even years of waiting.

Sleep Apnea Is A Serious Health Threat

This self-medication chair sleep position would not be a good cure for sleep apnea.

 

(I’ve been asked to write on my experience with sleep apnea. I figured I had sleep apnea, but totally ignored it for several years. I hope my experience with certain issues may help others find out if they have the same problems.)

It’s been estimated that up to 70% of people have sleep apnea. If you snore, chances are you are one of them.

I’ve been sleeping as an astronaut for the past 84 months. I wear what looks like a pilot’s mask with a hose running to a machine that forces air under pressure through my nose and down my throat to keep my tongue from blocking the airway.

I sometimes grind my teeth so I also wear (sometimes) a mouthpiece like a boxer so I don’t grind my teeth down to stubs. Before I had the mask, I would spit the mouthpiece each night and find it on the floor, across the room, or stuck in my hair. I no longer wear the mouthpiece and the teeth grinding has slack off, I guess.

I go to bed each night feeling like some nut on a psycho ward. It’s really not all that bad except for cleaning the mask daily because I don’t put it on until the last moments before we’re going to sleep. What I hate is the knowledge that I have to wear it because I will probably never sleep normal again. Sometimes, I do a count down from ten like I’m being launched into space or say something like, "I can see our house from up here."

The mask is probably saving my life.

Before Vietnam, I could sleep for eight hours without a problem. I remember people telling me I made noise sometimes, but I slept so sound that people used to stand me up and dance with me and I wouldn’t wake up.

After the war, I slept two hours at a time and often had nightmares about being back in the war. Often the nightmares were in real time. I kept saying in the dream that I wasn’t ready for another tour. When this is added to the condition where my tongue would slip back and block my airway, I wasn’t sleeping at all. Well, I did sleep, sitting up for ten or twenty minutes at a time.

The first time I was tested for sleep apnea, I found out that I held my breath 24 times an hour and my heart slowed to 39 beats per minute at least twice. I could have died in my sleep due to the slow heart beat.

After the mask was in place, I held my breath five times, which is considered normal. Plus, I no longer made a bunch of animal noises. I had this test done at a private clinic because I have other hospital insurance. I did have an appointment at the VA to be tested, but it was over a year wait, and when the time came I was out of town and missed it. Plus, who wants to wait a year to be tested for something that could kill you while you sleep.

There are drawbacks. I’ve never slept on my back. The best way to sleep with the C-pap machine is on your back. I can do it now but I had trouble adjusting, and sometimes I still sleep on my side.

It plays hell with your sinuses. I’ve pretty much had messed up sinuses ever since I’ve been using the machine. Sometimes, I sneeze all day and my nose runs.

If you travel, you need to drag the thing along. Plus, you need to clean the mask and hose daily with soap and water. I usually clean mine right before bed.

Plus, the whole setup costs about 2,000. So if you’re 50% or above get it from the VA if you don’t have outside insurance.

I do sleep better, deeper and a few hours longer, about 5 or 6 hours a night, compared to my usual 3 hours, but it really is a pain in the butt.

There are alternatives

The doctor told me I have sleep apnea because my tongue relaxes and slips back to cover my airway. He said they could operate on me, split my jawbone in the center of my chin, take a piece out, and force my jaw back together. I guess it could be like a facelift and pull all the sag out of your jaw if it sags.

This in not only major surgery, it will also change your appearance and probably make your chin pointed. It is also not guaranteed to work and could be a waste of time because the tongue may still slip.

"I’m not crazy about my face right now," I told the doctor. "But I’m used to it and I don’t want to look like a ferret."

I’ve also heard they have some kind of tubes like Dixie straws that they embed in the roof of your mouth to stop snoring or breath holding. I don’t think I could stand having straws stuck into the roof of my mouth.

I believe they should come up with a kind of boxer’s mouthpiece that will hold your tongue in place so it doesn’t relax backwards.

Sleep Apnea is serious. It can cause high blood pressure because the heart is without oxygen each time you hold your breath during sleep. This can lead to an enlarged heart and congestive heart failure.

By the way, my condition, holding my breath 24 times an hour, is considered to be mild sleep apnea. Some people hold their breath 50 and 100 times an hour. Some people also have to take oxygen at the same time.

I suggest that if you snore, have the sleep apnea test just to make sure you aren’t holding your breath.

Dennis Latham Books to make you laugh, curse, or go madd-d-d.

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PTSD Drugs: Can Negative Side Effects Create A Compensation Claim?

Weird side effect or a screwed up "About Face" command?

Can I claim any negative side effects from PTSD drugs for compensation purposes?

(I asked a friend at the VA and here is the answer.) The answer to that is yes.    The law was changed a year or so ago stating that drug and alcohol use can be a secondary consideration if used to tolerate symptoms of a service connected condition.

  So, that means that if a veteran has a service connection for a condition such as PTSD. If the veteran alleges that he uses pot and alcohol to tolerate his PTSD symptoms, perhaps to fall asleep or minimize nightmares, the chemical dependency may be considered a secondary condition that would actually increase the veteran's service connection rating. That is a radical departure from the traditional position that the V.A. has always taken regarding drug and alcohol use: that it was "misconduct".

  The same would follow for drugs prescribed by the VA to treat PTSD. Some drugs do have serious side effects, and if those side effects lead to a serious condition, file a claim for that condition as secondary to PTSD treatment.

  The best thing to do is immediately report any side effects so the doctor can change the medicine before it lead to complications.

  Also, always ask about the possible complications of mixing certain medicines. If you take other medicines, make sure each doctor knows what you’re taking because mixing certain drugs can cause serious side effects.

  Most Nam vets have reached the age where we all end up taking some kind of medicine for blood pressure, stomach problems, etc. Make sure to check all the side effects.

  If you take medicine, and you suddenly get the same medicine but it looks different, call and make sure you have the right medicine. The pharmacy can check to make sure you were not given the wrong pills by mistake or if the drug has a new manufacturer and a new shape.

  The VA contacted me by phone one time and told me to throw away a new bottle of medicine I had received. It was the right medicine, but in the wrong dosage. I’m glad they caught it because I wouldn’t have known I was taking twice the dose I should have been taking.

  The higher dose could have taken me out. I’m real careful now with any kind of medicine.

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A Court Rules Against PTSD Veterans

It could be now up to Congress to decide PTSD Claims...uh-oh.

The Beginning Of The Real End For The VA

In a major setback for suffering combat veterans, a federal appeals court on Monday found that Congress, not the courts, is responsible for fixing the VA's troubled mental health care system, overturning a previous court that found the program riddled with "unchecked incompetence." 

In a 10-1 decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a lawsuit that sought to force the Department of Veterans Affairs to overhaul the treatment program and reversed an earlier ruling that would have forced the government to speed up treatment requests and benefit claims.

I watched the news last week with one of their "side track" stories about the blind guy in China under house arrest. Side track stories are what I call news stories that are supposed to deflect your mind from how bad things are in this USA and to make people think our government really cares about human rights in a country where we have no legal right to scold anyone about human rights. The Chinese guy stated at one point that he wanted to come to America for a rest.

Think about that.

He's blind and can't work and if he came here he would get Social Security and probably a house and we would support him and he isn't even a citizen. He would get those things immediately, but U.S. veterans have to wait years for a claim to be allowed through the complicated VA system.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took five years to make the ruling after the lawsuit was filed in 2007. If it took five years just to consider who should be responsible for fixing the VA, how long would it take Congress to figure out what to do?  Asking Congress to fix the VA Mental Health Adjudication program is about like asking first graders to build and wire a moon rocket. They wouldn't have a clue about what to do, and most wouldn't care because they aren't veterans.

This opens the door to mass rejection of PTSD claims without any responsibility on the part of the VA. What bothers me the most is that there are people in Congress who will once again push to privatize the VA system. To them, the VA is one massive asset spread out all over the country, ripe for picking. They have special interests in Congress, and certain groups have been trying for years to take control of the VA. This would make it a "for profit system" and combat veterans will take the hit once again while those with the money make more money on veteran suffering.

The absolute worst thing that could happen to the VA is asking Congress to fix it because they will more than likely say to cut the budget which means unwarranted Comp Exams (to cut percentages) for existing disabled veterans and massive turn downs (often without proper reasoning) on open claims. The VA can also schedule appointments for you but then doesn't notify you of your appointment and then turns down your claim because you missed your appointment. They can continue to stall claims without being held responsible, while veterans die waiting or lose everything.

It seems to me that the Court has given veterans the ultimate shaft right when we need help the most.

(Dennis Latham is a Marine Vietnam combat veteran and an expert on combat PTSD claims. Since 1994 he has helped over 4000 combat veterans obtain PTSD compensation from te VA.)

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