PTSD benefits to war veterans vary

Graph showing Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans with mental ailments are seeing disability payments vary according to where they live. From McClatchy News.

This is from McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — Veterans coming home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with debilitating mental ailments are discovering that their disability payments from the government vary widely depending on where they live, an exclusive McClatchy analysis has found.

As a result, many of the recent veterans who're getting monthly payments for post-traumatic stress disorder from the Department of Veterans Affairs could lose tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits over their lifetimes.

The Bush administration has sought to reassure soldiers that they'll be treated fairly, but veterans in some parts of the country are far more likely to be well compensated than their compatriots elsewhere are, the analysis found.

McClatchy's analysis is based on 3 million disability compensation-claims records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, as well as separate documents that the VA provided. The analysis is the first to examine the issue of state-to-state variations in compensation for those young veterans who've left the military since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001.

For veterans, their families and their advocates, the issue of disability compensation is hugely important. Disability checks are now worth up to $2,527 a month for a single veteran with no children. Because they last a lifetime, low payments set now — when veterans are young — have a dramatic impact.

So far, more than 43,000 recent veterans are on the disability compensation rolls for a range of mental conditions from post-traumatic stress disorder to depression and anxiety. Of those, more than 31,000 have PTSD, which has emerged as one of the signature injuries from the war on terrorism. Given the number of soldiers who've served in Iraq and Afghanistan, that's a fraction of what the total will be.

The VA's assessments of those injuries, however, are all over the map.

Of the recent veterans processed by the VA office in Albuquerque, N.M., 56 percent have high ratings for PTSD. Of those handled by the office in Fort Harrison, Mont., only 18 percent do, the McClatchy analysis found.

"There's no reason in the world that a veteran from Ohio should be shortchanged on benefits simply because he is from Ohio," said U.S. Rep. Zack Space, a Democrat from Ohio, where veterans had among the lowest compensation rates in the nation. "And there's no reason a veteran from New Mexico should be getting more benefits simply because he lives in New Mexico."

I've read this story three times, and I can't figure out why these veteran medical payments are varying as according to where the veterans live. McClatchy goes into detail as to how these disability claims are processed, but there isn't really much of an explanation as to the discrepancy of the claims. According to McClatchy:

Although they're supposed to follow the same rules, the reality for VA workers in different offices is far different. What generates a high rating in one location may produce a lower one somewhere else.

[....]

Part of that is due to training differences around the country, and part is due to the personalities of individual employees who are handling claims and the different doctors and psychiatrists examining veterans who've applied for compensation.

Somehow there are training differences around the country as to how VA workers process these PTSD claims, and this difference in training is causing a difference in benefits paid to the claims.

Looking at this story, it appears to me that this is an example of how the Veterans Administration was never fully prepared for this long war we're in. The Bush administration never bothered giving the troops the support they needed for fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now the Bush administration is not giving the support these Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans need for helping with the PTSD, and the benefits they should be paid for their illness. The Veterans Administration never provided the resources and training to help these veterans. This is just another example of this Bush administration's failed Iraq and Afghanistan wars.