Oklahoma City vets’ claims being rejected

Oklahoma City vets’ claims being rejected

Many armed forces veterans in Oklahoma are having trouble receiving disability payments
BY ANN KELLEY The Oklahoman Comments Comment on this article6
Published: January 10, 2010

Four times Gary Endsley has applied for disability compensation for health problems he thinks are related to exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. Each time Endsley has been turned down by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

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With each rejection letter he’s flooded with more disappointment and frustration, and feels that he’s "being called a liar” about his military record, he said.

"I’m beginning to feel like I had been better off going to Canada and skipping the war,” said Endsley, 65, of Oklahoma City.

Endsley is one of many armed forces veterans living in Oklahoma and wrangling with Veterans Affairs over disability compensation.

Nationally, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs processed more than 1.1 million claims in 2009, including 25,396 for Oklahoma, said Jessica Jacobson, spokeswoman for the agency’s regional office in Dallas.

The Oklahoman requested the number of Oklahoma veterans denied disability compensation for 2009, but Jacobson Friday said those numbers were not available.

She said the caseload has increased 50 percent since 2000, with Afghanistan and Iraq military servicemen and women returning home and the aging population of other war veterans, as well as the initiation of new U.S. Department of Defense benefits and recent court rulings.

Veterans feel impact
Terry Farmer thinks the increased caseload and inevitable backlog of claims has attributed to his uncle, Raymond O’Mealey, being denied disability compensation in December. O’Mealey, 87, of Oklahoma City is a World War II veteran.

"I think they’re so overwhelmed they don’t have time to really investigate the claims,” Farmer said.

O’Mealey suffers from several combat-related ailments, including post traumatic stress syndrome and foot problems from a severe case of jungle rot.

Farmer said O’Mealey filled out the 28-page application and has physician letters to back up his claim.

"Their response was basically that there wasn’t enough proof that his condition was service related,” Farmer said.

Records that might help his uncle prove his case were destroyed in a 1973 fire in a government building in St. Louis, Farmer said.

Endsley is facing a similar problem. His service records were thrown away by a former spouse. He’s tried to rebuild his file, but the U.S. government has no record of his temporary duty assignments, which included more than a month in Vietnam, where he thinks he was exposed to Agent Orange.

He’s even gone so far as to get a letter from a fellow serviceman who relieved him from duty in Vietnam, but that wasn’t enough.

"I suppose we’re both liars,” Endsley said. Jacobson said claims decisions are weighed on evidence from physicians and hospital and military records.

If a claimant disagrees with the findings, they can file a notice of disagreement. For Oklahomans, the claim is sent from the Muskogee office to be reviewed by a senior decision maker at the regional office in Dallas. If the claim is denied a second time, it can be appealed to the Board of Veterans Appeals in Washington, D.C.

Jacobson said in 2009, they averaged nationally more than 80,000 new claims each month. The goal is to process each claim within 125 days, but in 2008, 36.7 percent took longer.

For James Sisco, of Yukon, the problem is not getting disability compensation, but getting it increased as his back injury has worsened over the years. Sisco, 50, retired from the Navy in 1997 with 20 percent disability benefits. It entitles him to a $200 a month payment. He reapplied again in 2008, hoping to get more money.

"Basically, they said there was no change in my status even though I’ve got years of medical records showing how painful my back problem is,” Sisco said. "I’m not trying to get something for nothing.”

He thinks his claim is being handled like "he’s a faceless person” by "a bunch of government bureaucrats.”

Every claim is unique
John Pettyjohn, 60, of Bethany, has been helping Oklahoma veterans with their claims applications for nearly 20 years, first as a volunteer.

He’s helped veterans with more than 15,000 claims and has 127 cases working.

"The claims are as unique as the individual,” Pettyjohn said.

Pettyjohn said veterans shouldn’t be tasked with finding evidence of their service because the claims processors should be doing that.

"You get these new guys in there that don’t understand war or what happens during a war,” Pettyjohn said. "If too much footwork is involved they just give up.”

To address the increasing caseload, the Veterans Administration has hired nearly 4,200 employees since January 2007, Jacobson said.

It takes about two years for a new employee at the administration to be fully trained in all aspects of claims processing.

She said they’ve hired back 90 recent retirees to assist in training and mentoring new employees. They also are trying to streamline into paperless processing with technology to process claims faster.

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