Claim Appeal Stalled

Claim Appeals

  

I reported last issue on a veteran who received a notice from the DAV that they didn’t know what his gender was after 40 years. This is ridiculous.

  Now, the same veteran has received a notice from the VA on his appeal that they don’t know who is representing him because there is no representative listed.

  I believe the DAV and the VA both dropped the ball on this one. I don’t know how, but the veteran is service-connected for wounds and it has to be listed somewhere in his claim that the DAV represents him. He had already filed a previous claim using the DAV.

  He called me after he had called the DAV, cussed them out and told them they were killing Nam vets with their lack of help.

  If he had called  me before he called the DAV, I would have told him not to call and cuss them out. You really shouldn’t cuss people out you want to help you.

  I understand his frustration. Nam vets are on the back burner now. Like WW 2 vets, the VA wants us gone. I just read today that the medical field no longer wants to test vets over 75 for colon cancer. This is for insurance purposes, I’m sure. It costs money to keep us alive. The New World Socialist Order wants old working class people, especially veterans they can’t use for service any longer, to die.

  Another article showed unclaimed veteran bodies in the morgues so long before they are buried that the bodies had rotted in the body bags. This is terrible, but nothing is being done about it.

New Tactic To Stall VA Claims: Gender

I'm in the back in a blue shirt.
B Company Reunion at the wall 2012

New Tactic To Stall Claims: Gender

   A Marine Vietnam veteran called me the other day. I had been advising him on his claim for Agent Orange since he had major heart surgery back in 2014.  His claim had been on appeal because the VA is trying to fight an increase for Ischemic Heart Disease under the presumptive Agent Orange Ruling for heart disease. He has heard nothing on his appeal since 2014.

  He had been trying to call the local DAV (his rep) for months and kept getting busy signals or no call backs. He called Cleveland, and finally got a call back from a DAV Rep. The guy was kind of nasty to him, like he was bothering him, and told him an appeal can take 4-7 years.

  My friend got angry over that, but what was worse, the DAV guy also said his claim was stalled because they didn’t know his gender.

  “I’ve been service-connected from Nam since 1971. My first name is John, and you’re telling me they don’t know my gender. What the hell is that?”

  “You don’t have to cuss at me,” the DAV guy said, and hung up on him.

  When he told me this, I got as angry as he did. An appeal should not take that long, especially with a Nam veteran. He also had cancer in addition to a five-way bypass.

  And on top of that they insult him with this gender thing.

  (For a Nam veteran with an obvious male name, that is an ultimate insult. The VA is just trying to stall until he dies. I believe they want all us Nam veterans to die, just like they do the WW2 veterans and they did with WW1 veterans.)

  Since he is from Ohio, I told him to contact his Congressman. Steve Chabot had also grilled Clinton in her scenario that went nowhere, but he was in there trying.

  Chabot’s office responded and they are making an inquiry. Once a politician makes an inquiry, things usually move along faster on a claim.

  John should be 100% for his Agent Orange conditions, dating back to the day of his diagnosis and surgery. He submitted all the documentation they asked for several times. (It’s amazing how much stuff the VA loses if you don’t send it certified where someone has to sign for it and get a returned receipt.)

  Finally after he followed my advice to send it certified, they received it. I believe that most times if you don’t send them something certified, it gets tossed.

  The gender thing was a new one on me, and I got really angry that anyone would try to use that on us. I also feel the DAV Rep should be instantly fired. Anymore it seems like the organizations are working for the VA and not the veteran.

  If you have to send anything to the VA on request, I would sent it certified/return receipt. I went through the same thing back in 2009 when one of my stents caused a problem a few months after being placed and I had a minor heart attack.

  The local hospital kept sending the paperwork to the VA a total of three times, and each time they said they didn’t get it. I went to the hospital. They were nice and said they would send it once more. I asked them for it and I sent it Certified/Return Receipt, and told the hospital that would be the only way the VA would admit getting it.

  The people at the hospital couldn’t believe what the VA does to us veterans on the claim end. And it is truly a crime.

  I will post updates on my friend. I hope he can outlast them. I still shake my head over that gender thing. It truly shows how brain dead and insulting some people at the VA and service organizations can be.

PTSD From War

Leaving the deck of the USS Okinawa in an H-34 chopper/BLT 1/3 Vietnam 1967

PTSD From War

  I read an article this morning about a Navy Public Relations Officer taking his son to Vietnam for a visit. He had spent six months in Saigon during the war and wanted to see the place again.

  He talked about Hanoi, and how the people make 8.00 a day and work seven days a week, and how the Uncle Ho Burial place, where he was on display, was the highlight of the peoples’ lives.

  The more I read the angrier I got, from their claiming to have shot down 35,000 American war planes to their claiming to have won the war. (When you lose three million and the other side loses 58,000, that’s not a win. Politics ended that war and got many Americans killed. We didn’t lose nothing on the ground.)

  Then, he talked about how the Hanoi government claimed the American prisoners were all treated good and showed pictures of them playing volleyball and other ridiculous stuff.

   I know most of the Vietnamese who were alive when I was in Vietnam are gone...but I can’t get my hatred of that war or that country out of my mind. It’s not even so much hate anymore. It’s a rage at how that place changed all of our lives.

  I could never go back there. I left myself over there, and what came home was someone new who was lost. I didn’t even know who I was. I came home and sat in a chair and just stared straight ahead, not believing I was home, and wondering what I was going to do now that I was home. My parents didn’t know me. My mother would stare at me, knowing something had changed but she felt helpless to understand what was wrong.

  I couldn’t go back and I don’t know if I’ve ever gone forward in the sense that I left the war behind.

  I didn’t understand PTSD when I came home. I didn’t even know it existed or that I had it. I understand it better now, and I imagine I used to be a lot worse than I am now. I know I was because at one point I blacked my living room windows out with garbage bags so know one could possibly know where I was inside and take a shot at me.

  But even now after dark, I can’t sit in a room to relax unless I have the shades drawn.

  My feelings have never changed about Vietnam. Some guys can go back to the actual place and make peace with themselves. I could never do it. I would either breakdown and cry or I would want to begin shooting. In my heart, I still feel that Vietnam and the  people  are still my enemies.

  I imagine a lot of people from WW2 and Korea feel the same way about their enemies and their countries. The same with veterans of the new Iraq and Afghan Wars.

  Like many vets with PTSD, I try to keep it hidden. I do believe if you were in Vietnam  or any conflict and under fire or forced to deal with the dead and wounded, you have some symptoms of PTSD. You are not the same person you were after you came home. Some veterans can’t handle it as well as others.

  I believe PTSD is worse for Vietnam veterans in part because we felt everyone in Vietnam hated us and everyone back home hated us, and we didn’t know why the people back home hated us.

   I get angry today when the media and others call anyone who even joins the reserves a hero. If you are in boot camp you are a hero, if you are on a ship you are a hero, if you are in the military at all you are a hero.

  To me, a Marine with PTSD, this is overkill; an attempt by the media to now display phony patriotism. It has nothing to do with the actual veterans. Their families will always consider them heroes. This is an over-attempt by a media that hates the military to make people think they respect the military...when they actually think anyone who serves is a fool, just like they thought anyone who served in Vietnam was a baby killer.

  I guess I’m just one of those people who can never go back or make peace with myself about that war,

 from the S-2 Report Newsletter

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