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Angry vets demand end to backlog of disability claims
More than 200 veterans attend a forum organized by lawmakers seeking to expedite stalled or bungled disability claims. One attendee filed his claim in 1947.
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Veteran Douglas Briggs throws up his arms in frustration as he makes his feelings known about the failure of the VA to process claims for disabilities. At right is Willie Clark, the VA's western regional director. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times / May 21, 2012)
By Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times
May 22, 2012
...
Ari Sonnenberg served three tours in Iraq and came home with a traumatic brain injury, PTSD and internal injuries. "Haunting memories of the horrors of war" drove him to attempt suicide, he said, and he called the office of Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) for help navigating the veterans benefits system.
On Monday, Sonnenberg left the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs hospital so that he could testify during a heart-wrenching forum attended by more than 200 veterans seeking to expedite stalled and bungled disability claims. For more than three hours they vented about a system that they said actually makes their lives worse.
The main target of the frustrated, often tearful, men and women was the Oakland office of the Department of Veterans Affairs — which serves an area from Kern County north to the Oregon border; it has the second-largest case backlog of any regional office in the country, behind Seattle.
"I'd like to use this opportunity to express to the VA benefits section how the unnecessary delay and loss of documents and mishandling of information caused added stress and anxiety to my already difficult life," Sonnenberg, pale and shaking, told the packed hearing room. If not for Speier, "I would still be floating around the system."
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oakland-veterans-20120522%2c0%2c3974777.story
1 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
