Veterans Benefit Network . . .

Almost everyday, I go to the Veterans Benefit Network forum.  It is for and by US veterans and as you would opine deals with issues of veteran health, compensation and the Department of Veteran Affairs.  There are various topics but the more common ones are Diabetes Type II, Agent Orange and of course the awards for service connected disabilities.

You learn a great deal on the forum.  For instance the VA health clinics and hospitals have nothing to do with the award of Service Connected (SC) disability awards and the compensation for those disabilities.   And Congress has as usual stepped in and muck up things here and there.  We all call that generally red tape.  And the VA which has been around since the Civil War so is mired knee deep in it.  It is much like the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.

That means the VA moves agonizingly slow.  One fills out the appropriate VA form for a claim  for SC disability.  Now days there are required two forms, one is general in nature and the other is specific the SC claim, like Diabetes and so on.

And the VA is very fragmented.  Each state has a Regional Office (RO).  Some states like Texas has two of them.  There is usually a giant humongus hospital associated with the RO.  In my case, I deal with the Waco, TX RO.  So I must send my claims to that office.  And Waco is the home of Baylor University and the VA.  I am not sure which is bigger, the school or the VA complex.

Each RO has service organizations associated with it.  These are American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans just to name a few of them.  And sometimes you can find at the county level, a Service Organization representative.  That person receives a small stipend and is usually a disable veteran him or herself.  You can get the VA forms at his office.  Or you can download them from the VA web site.

Every large community in the US has a VA facility.  Example is at Dallas, TX there is a huge hospital dedicated exclusively to serving the disable veterans.  Fort Worth has a VA clinic, serious stuff is sent over to Dallas or down to Waco as needed.

And when you submit an SC claim, it may be shuffled out to Buffalo.  By that I mean, there are ROs that specialize in that particular disability.  So your paper work may start at your RO and end up in Kansas City, or some where else in the US.  That spreads out the work from the busiest location to that location with the specialist.

An SC claim usually takes from a minimum of six months to years to finalize.  I had an SC for Tinnitus and that was done in a six month period.  That was really quite fast.  I got a SC of 10% for Tinnitus but alas, it made not different to my total disability.  It just added to the stack of paper and is now a matter of record.

The forum though is riddled with folks looking for help with their SC.  Some of the SCs are in appeal, that is the VA evaluated the condition and said, no.  There is an appeal process one can go through.  Those are the SCs that can last years.  Not to worry, if one is successful in his or her appeal, then the VA has go back and compensate you from the date you initially put in you paper work.  That is sometimes a rather large piece of money.  And usually, those people are in dire straits from a need perspective.

The VA does have an expedited process for those in truly bad financial situation.  Even then, it takes several months, maybe up to six months to get it finalize.  If anything, the VA is thorough in its reviews and process.

Oh yes, at any given time the VA is processing 90,000 claims a month.  So it is a vast bureaucracy one is dealing with, and has its bad actors as well as its stars.  So the forum is often a place to vent.  And they vent about the claims side of the place as well as the health service side of things.  Remember there are 50 states and fifty or more ROs to deal with some 339,000,000 people.  Not just the Veterans are effected, so are their families and care takers.  It is a vast operation.

So the forum is divided up into general subjects attuned to the veterans needs.  Diabetes is one, Agent Orange is another, just for Women is still another and of awards of SCs.

It seems like every day a veteran discovers the VNB.  Some topics occur over and over again, yet others appear new.  We fight all over the world, so there are the obvious wounded we deal with, and the not so obvious like the effects of the defoliant Agent Orange which results I a whole host of disease like Diabetes Type II (I am one of those Agent Orange people).  Most times the forum can help because of some many of us with those experiences dealing with the VA, sometimes it is just someone venting, others are obvious goldbrickers trying to play the system to their advantage.

So when you read about a veteran getting mistreated, it is usually the slow bureaucratic processes and individuals causing the problem.  It is some times a self fulfilling giant mindful of its self first rather than the customer, the veteran.  The VA is the largest of its kind in the world and services US veterans all over the world.  Oh yes, one final piece of the puzzle, VA compensation is 100% tax free and one usually gets free medical care for that disability (from the VA of course).