Murray blocks VA review of vets’ stress claims
An amendment by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., to an appropriations bill approved by the Senate last week would put the brakes on a Department of Veterans Affairs review of claims by veterans receiving disability payment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Veterans with PTSD deserve the VA’s compassion and support, not costly investigations, penalties and stigma,” Murray said.
In August, the VA said it would review the cases of 72,000 veterans receiving disability payments due to PTSD. The review was announced after an inspector general’s study of about 2,100 claims found inconsistencies in the way a third of them were processed. Many lacked the necessary paperwork.
The review announced last month would include veterans whose disability claims were approved between 1999 and 2004, a time in which the number of veterans receiving disability benefits for PTSD increased about 80 percent, from 120,265 to 215,871, according to the Associated Press. Last year the VA paid out $4.3 billion for such benefits.
Murray’s amendment to the 2006 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill would block the review until the VA justifies the program to Congress. It also would prevent the VA from stopping veterans’ benefits except in cases of fraud. The bill now goes to conference committee where it will be reconciled with the House version.
“Veterans should not be punished for mistakes the VA has made, and that’s what my amendment ensures,” Murray said.
Her measure came as welcome news to veteran service organizations, which feared the VA would use the review to strip veterans of disability benefits for stress disorder.
“Most of these folks have not even heard about this,” Skip Dreps, governmental relations director for the Northwest chapter of the Paralyzed Veterans of America, said of the review. “To them, this is like a death threat.”
Dreps said many emotionally disabled veterans were assured that their disability claim was good for as long as they could not work, and taking those benefits away would be “going down a very dark path.”
As of June, about 11,000 of Washington state’s 650,000 veterans received some amount of compensation for PTSD, Dreps said.
The inspector general’s report last May found insufficient proof of a “stressor,” the triggering event for combat-related stress disorder, in more than a quarter of the cases it studied. None of those cases was in Washington state.
Dreps said evidence of stressors is often difficult to document. The military, he said, does not typically keep records of traumatic events during combat in a soldier’s file, but rather in his unit’s file, which may no longer be available.
Until now, Dreps said, “The VA has always believed you if you were credible.”
The review of PTSD disability benefits comes at a time when the VA expects to process as many as 90,000 additional claims in the coming year, many from veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, Dreps said. He and Murray believe the cost-cutting move by the Bush administration would take time and resources away from processing those claims.
“It’s already hard enough for veterans to seek care for mental health problems,” Murray said. “I can’t stand by and let the VA throw down another barrier in front of veterans with PTSD.”