Suit claiming shoddy treatment of veterans goes to trial in S.F.

[fed-up]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, April 21, 2008


(04-21) 17:30 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- More than 120 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq commit suicide every week while the government stalls in granting returning troops the mental health treatment and benefits to which they are entitled, veterans advocates told a federal judge Monday in San Francisco.

...

He said veterans are committing suicide at the rate of 18 a day - a number acknowledged by a VA official in a Dec. 15 e-mail - and the agency's backlog of disability claims now exceeds 650,000, an increase of 200,000 since the Iraq war started in 2003.

..
The lawsuit is a proposed class action on behalf of 320,000 to 800,000 veterans or their survivors. The advocacy groups say the VA arbitrarily denies care and benefits to wounded veterans, forces them to wait months for treatment and years for benefits, and gives them little recourse when it rejects their medical claims.

"The time delays are staggering," Erspamer, the plaintiffs' lawyer, told Conti on Monday. Although the VA says it decides the typical claim for benefits in six months, he said, the agency takes far longer to review post-traumatic stress claims, and four years or more for the government to hear veterans' appeals of denied treatment.
...

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/21/BAQK109AA7.DTL

[Bozita]

1. "More than 120 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq commit suicide every week"

Help them now!

FUCKING NOW!