Politics & Government

LETTER: Veterans Administration Must Do Better

To the Editor,

There are two parts of the Department of Veterans Affairs one is the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA); the other part is the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).

Today the astonishing backlog of Veteran disability claims at the VBA is not new — just ask any Vietnam veteran. I served in Vietnam in 1968 and was honorably discharged from the Army in 1969 after spending nine months in a military hospital recovering from my leg wounds. It took me over 20 years to be awarded a service connect disability from the VBA for my service connected wounds

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Today our young veterans are facing an astonishing backlog of VBA disability claims for illnesses and injuries caused by military service. There have been Congressional hearings, special reports and millions of words spoken regarding the growing backlog of VBA disability claims. 

There are 780,000 claims pending and about 496,000 are considered to be backlogged. Veterans of all ages have actually died before their disability clams where processed by the VBA. For the most part this embarrassing situation regarding processing of disability claims is not caused by the VHA; it’s caused by VBA leadership in Washington D.C.

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Eric K. Shinseki was a former U.S. Army general and is now the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Honorable Eric K. Shinseki needs to take ownership of this embarrassing disability claim situation at the VBA. 

Shinseki needs to have his leadership team stop blaming VBA and VHA staff members, or their unions, or Veterans, or the cow that jumped over the moon for this embarrassing cultural leadership problem within the VBA. One solution to solving this embarrassing cultural leadership problem within the VBA is to replace the VBA leaders.

Newspaper headline: “Obama Pledges Help for Veterans.” It’s time we Veterans took advantage of President Obama’s pledge to help Veterans. We Veterans have earned the right to voice our views to the President of the United States of America. Every Veteran is obligated to write, e-mail or call President Obama with their VBA disability claim horror story.

Thomas Alegi
Hamden


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