Vets Face Struggles Claiming Disability Benefits

By Author: ben austen
Total Articles: 21
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Soldiers returning home from the decades long wars being fought by them in Iraq and Afghanistan often find that the injuries they suffered while serving our country are not being completely appreciated by the military's disability retirement system. Injuries that our returning veterans suffer such as post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and other lifelong debilitating injuries are being met by resistance by the bureaucratic red tape that wraps its way around the agencies meant to assist these vets when it comes to evaluating and assisting them for life after the military.

Specifically, disability retirement attorneys representing several returning American soldiers wounded in battle say that the military service's top agency for this purpose, the Physical Disability Agency is the source of unfair rules and unclear policies when it comes to evaluating a soldier's injuries and the benefits they are entitled to by the U.S. government. The rules and practices now in effect tend to keep a soldier's disability ratings low, thereby reducing the benefits due them.

The area of disability ...
... most commonly cited as being a source of consternation and concern is that of post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD because this is a disability that is not easy to prove with medical evidence, despite the soldier clearing suffering the symptoms and effects of this war-related disability. Attorneys for soldiers making a claim against the agency say that decisions on PTSD ratings for soldiers suffering from this problem should be the same as those for any other mental disability and that the Army's own regulations clearly state that if there is no proof against a soldier's claim of having post traumatic stress disorder reasonable doubt should be resolved in favor of the soldier.

The problem is not so much to determine if a solider is indeed suffering from PTSD, or other related mental and emotional trauma, but the disability rating that should be applied to that soldier's claim. There is no easy answer to this question among the doctors or lawyers who are now trying to make policy on the issue because in some cases there is clear evidence of brain injury as seen on a brain scan while in other cases the symptoms and behavioral issues are clear but the actual clinical evidence is not.

The situation is not level across all branches of the services. The Air Force and the Navy adhere much more closely to the guidance coming from the Defense Department than the Army does. The average disability ratings and payments for Air Force and Navy veterans are higher than those in the Army, despite the fact that the Army has many more injuries to their soldiers returning from the battlefield.

Injured Army veterans can appeal their disability ratings but data shows that only a small number of them actually do so, though that is changing. Spokesmen for the wounded Army vets say that Army lawyers should be much more active at early stages in the process, at the medical evaluation boards where the actual decisions are being made about which soldiers are fit to return to duty and which can no longer serve in active combat roles. These boards are also responsible to determine the extent of the injuries and the disability rating that should be applied for each soldier.

One of the issues confronted by injured soldiers is the misconception that these boards can only evaluate them for one injury, instead of for all of their injuries, which would obviously change their overall disability rating. At this point, over 80% of all injured soldiers accept the first ratings given out by the medical evaluation boards with only 20% appealing these decisions. With the disability ratings governing the care and disability and retirement benefits received by a wounded soldier over their lifetime, they would be best served to make sure that these disability ratings are fair and accurate before they accept them.

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