Army Blocks Disability Paperwork Aid at Fort Drum

[Cavguy]

Just when you thought the Army had stopped digging itself further into a hole with the medical/disability issues, the bureaucracy strikes out in a supreme display of cluelessness.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=18492376

Army officials in upstate New York instructed representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs not to help disabled soldiers at Fort Drum Army base with their military disability paperwork last year. That paperwork can be crucial because it helps determine whether soldiers will get annual disability payments and health care after they're discharged.

.....

"To be tossed aside like a worn-out pair of boots is pretty disheartening," the soldier says. "I always believed the Army would take care of me if I did the best I could, and I've done that."

At a restaurant near Fort Drum, the soldier described his first briefing with the VA office on base. According to the soldier, the VA official told a classroom full of injured troops, "We cannot help you review the narrative summaries of your medical problems." The official said the VA used to help soldiers with the paperwork, but Army officials saw soldiers from Fort Drum getting higher disability ratings with the VA's help than soldiers from other bases. The Army told the VA to stop helping Fort Drum soldiers describe their army injuries, and the VA did as it was told.

....
According to Army spokesman George Wright, the Tiger Team thought the VA should not be helping soldiers with their medical documents. The Army delivered that message to VA officials in Buffalo, N.Y., who went along with the request, even though the VA's assistance complied with Army policy.

The Army declined to provide any information about the Tiger Team members' identities or their motivations in asking the VA to stop reviewing the soldiers' paperwork. However, private attorney Mara Hurwitt points out that the Army has a financial incentive to keep soldiers' disability ratings low.

"The more soldiers you have who get disability retirements, the more retirement pay is coming out of your budget," Hurwitt says.

Whether the reason behind the request is accurate or not, it just doesn't make sense that the Army would continue to turn away help.

It's no wonder we can't get strategic communications together.

[Tom Odom]

Just when you thought the Army had stopped digging itself further into a hole with the medical/disability issues, the bureaucracy strikes out in a supreme display of cluelessness.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=18492376



Whether the reason behind the request is accurate or not, it just doesn't make sense that the Army would continue to turn away help.

It's no wonder we can't get strategic communications together.

Now this one really fits the dumb, dumber, and dumberer category. Ft Drum soldiers getting higher ratings than others so immediately the "fix" is to make sure the ratings are lower.

Tom

[John T. Fishel]

worth asking of our Congressmen and Senators?

I just passed the exerpts along to my congressman, Tom Cole. Incidentally, Mara Hurwitt was a Naval officer who was a student of mine at CGSC. Darned bright officer.

[Cavguy]

Sounds like the junior Senator from NY and presidental canidate has already started.

http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/263946.html

The Army is already adding some caveats to the allegations, but it still doesn't pass the common sense test.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., upon learning of the controversy, issued her own statement critical of the overall bureaucracy confounding active-duty and former members of the military.

“If these allegations are true, they run counter to our nation’s pledge made to our men and women in uniform,” Clinton said. “It is our duty to eliminate obstacles standing in the way of our disabled service members and veterans, not to create them. Our wounded should not have to deal with endless bureaucratic red tape just to receive the basic care entitled to them.”

She sent a letter to Secretary of the Army Pete Geren asking for an independent investigation.

Army's response here ...

.... Statements from the VA and Army officials dispute that, saying the Army merely made VA officials in Buffalo aware their workers were helping with paperwork they were not trained to handle. The VA said they felt it was “inappropriate” for their workers to use VA standards for paperwork on Army documents. The VA would neither confirm or deny that Army officials directed them to stop helping.

Both Congressman McHugh and Senator Clinton have expressed concerns over the report. McHugh met yesterday with the Army Surgeon General, who told him no orders or directions came from the group of Army representatives. He says he will wait until he hears the VA’s side of the story before saying more.

Senator Clinton has called for the Secretary of the Army to open a Pentagon investigation on the allegations.

I'm with Donna Shalala, the whole system needs to be canned.

[Ken White]

are a result of Congressional tinkering. Congress frequently is apprised of a 'problem' (meaning a constituent has a specific issue which may or may not be valid) and then reacts (the Congroid involved slaps an amendment onto the appropriation bill) and passes a law to 'fix' the problem.

The problem is they also work offline by contacting DoD or the VA to 'suggest' certain fixes. Unfortunately, all these fixes, by amendment and by offline interference result in creating chaos and adding tons of bureaucratic complexity to what should be simple and forthright procedures and the disability systems -- both -- are as good examples of that as is our over 16,000 page Tax Code.

As always, the troops pay the price.

All that said, I agree that the whole system needs to be scrapped and re-done but my normal cheerful optimism is replaced, whenever Congress is involved, by extremely dour pessimism; no good can come of it...

[John T. Fishel]

a letter to a Rep or Senator produces an inquiry such as the ones Hill and McHugh made (although at the staff level). Typically, a staffer will call the unit in question or there will be a letter sent at a higher level.While the response is often bureaucratic gobbledygook (as seen in Cavguy's second post) the service will often modify what it is doing to make sure that people get what they deserve. If the mil bureaucracy is in the wrong the error usually gets rectified without any admission of error. (As we all know bureaucracies never are in error).

Cheers

JohnT

[wm]

I wonder if part of the story is confusing the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) with Disabled American Veterans (DAV). When I retired, DAV had a field service rep in the VA office who helped process disability applications through the DVA hoops. This guy came out to do retirement prep outbriefs as well. Could it be they are now in Retirement Service Offices at Posts, camps, and stations?

BTW, last fall my US Rep sent me (and all the other vets in his district I'm sure) a letter using his Congressional mail franking privileges that was blatant partisan politics. In it he provided a Veterans Affairs update tooting the horn of the Democratic Party for getting a lot more folks authorized for hire at DVA to speed the processing of disability claims paperwork. I sent him a reply suggesting that this was a short term fix to a problem and the fix will become a long term "entitlement" problem in its own right as the new hires get tenure in Civil Service. The money spent on their salaries and benefits could probably find much better uses in funding direct services for disabled vets both now and in the future.