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Ask a Vet
Author: TriSec    Date: 12/07/2010 11:42:14

Good Morning.

Today is our 2,820th day in Iraq and our 3,348th day in Afghanistan.

We'll start this morning as we always do, with the latest casualty figures from our ongoing wars, courtesy of Antiwar.com:

American Deaths
Since war began (3/19/03): 4429
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 4290
Since Handover (6/29/04): 3570
Since Obama Inauguration (1/20/09): 201
Since Operation New Dawn: 11

Other Coalition Troops - Iraq: 318
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 1,414
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 830
Contractor Employee Deaths - Iraq: 1,487
Journalists - Iraq : 348
Academics Killed - Iraq: 448


We find this morning's Cost of War passing through:

$ 1, 117, 939, 000, 000 .00




We'll veer a little bit away from our vets today, and I'll let you peer a little into the dark side of medical insurance. Long ago now, I was the bad guy, the one you hated, the cold, heartless bastard that made people cry. That's right...I used to exploit every loophole and deny insurance claims for a living. The hell of it is, I was very good at it, and I liked what I was doing a lot. A favorite tactic of mine was denying claims for missing a filing limit...meaning that if a carrier gave you 90 days, or 180 days to file a claim...that was a hard and fast rule. A claim received at 91 days was dead on arrival, and no, you couldn't appeal that, sorry.

Which is why I have mixed feelings about this next story. In all my years of doing the evil business, I caved only once...and that's because the doctor's office was utterly destroyed in a 5-alarm fire and he lost absolutely everything. But even then, the provider had to call me screaming about it, because I denied the initial claim. Insurance companies are heartless bastards, yes. So it's not really a surprise that an appeal has gone to the Supreme Court.


WASHINGTON — The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left nearly 40,000 U.S. troops wounded, caused veterans' disability claims to spiral and now brought new urgency to a legal fight over deadlines for claims.

The Supreme Court on Monday will hear a case testing whether a veteran — in this situation, from the Korean War with severe mental illness — should be prevented from appealing a Department of Veterans Affairs denial of benefits if he missed a 120-day time limit for judicial review of the decision.

Advocacy groups that have joined the case say the dilemma for vets navigating the claims system is especially compelling today and the need for flexibility in filing deadlines even more important.

"We've seen, as you would expect, a spike in disability claims during wartime," says lawyer Gregory Garre, representing the National Organization of Veterans' Advocates. "In these conflicts we've also seen a rise in traumatic stress injuries, psychological injuries and other problems that would cause a veteran to miss a deadline for appeal."

"Disabled veterans are sometimes hospitalized for extended periods of time, beyond 120 days," adds William Mailander, general counsel for the Paralyzed Veterans of America. "They may not be getting their mail and may not even know that a decision has been made."

Department of Veterans Affairs lawyers counter that the 120-day deadline is set by federal statute and that it is up to Congress, not judges, to add any flexibility.
*snip*
In the veteran's dispute, a U.S. appeals court relied on the 2007 case, Bowles v. Russell, and declared the 120-day time limit a firm rule barring any judicial exceptions. It rejected an appeal from Korean War veteran David Henderson, who was found 100% disabled with paranoid schizophrenia after his service in the early 1950s.

The current case began in 2001 when Henderson, living in North Carolina, sought monthly benefits for in-home care related to his condition.

Henderson's lawyers say he missed the 120-day deadline for appealing the VA's denial by 15 days because he was bedridden from the very disability for which he needed benefits.

The Veterans Court, a special court that hears appeals from the VA's administrative process, said it could not grant a deadline extension for any reason. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed, based on the high court's 2007 decision, saying federal time limits are not subject to judges' discretion unless Congress has written such flexibility into the law. Some of the judges in the Federal Circuit majority noted, however, that "the rigid deadline of the existing statute can and does lead to unfairness."

Henderson died on Oct. 24 this year at age 81, and his wife, Doretha, has taken over the appeal.

Washington lawyer Lisa Blatt, representing Henderson at the high court, argues that Congress wrote the 120-day time limit in a way that allows the Veterans Court judges to make exceptions when they deem it necessary.

"The overarching thrust of the veterans' disability scheme," she tells the justices in her brief, "is decisively pro-veteran. It defies credulity that Congress intended to impose an anti-veteran jurisdictional rule in an otherwise pro-veteran scheme." She says the 2007 high court case, involving a different federal law and different context, should not control the veterans' situation.

In an interview, Blatt added, "This case is important to a significant number of veterans."


There are two unrelated stories that I've saved this morning that don't really relate to today's blog, but I can't figure out how to tie them together....so I'll just throw them out there. It's issues we have been covering here at AAV for quite some time.

First, Women's Vet's suicide rate rises sharply. Sadly, this does not come as a surprise, but that's not why I bookmarked this story. No, this ties back to something Raine has been reporting about for some time....sexual violence against our women soldiers. A statistic buried deep in the story is rather telling.


Many women in the military face the added threat of sexual violence. In a study of 21,800 women veterans who served in Iraq, 15 percent experienced sexual assault or harassment while in the service.


Women make up about 14% of the active Army. So, extrapolate that to 100,000 soldiers that were in Iraq at any given time, and you do the math.

Finally this morning...I'll leave you with another horror story from Arlington. This just makes me so sick that I can't even develop these stories anymore. I cringe whenever I see "Arlington" in a headline these days. Our tooly Senator Brown (R-MA) wants to take the lead on this. I have called his office numerous times, and he seems sincere on this issue....but so far it's all talk and no action.


 

52 comments (Latest Comment: 12/07/2010 23:53:08 by Raine)
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