With veterans benefits, knowing is half the battle

[babylonsister]

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070527/NEWS/705270335

With veterans benefits, knowing is half the battle

By Steve Urbon
Standard-Times staff writer
May 27, 2007 6:00 AM

Donat "Dan" LeBlanc clearly remembers the day nearly 40 years ago when a Marine Corps bureaucrat, running down a list of questions intended to gauge the extent of his disability from a fresh war wound, asked, "Are you right-handed or left-handed?"

Sitting there with only one arm, the young Mr. LeBlanc nearly answered, "Are you stupid?" It was pretty clear that the enemy machine gunner in Vietnam's Quang Tri province had taken his right arm, part of his right shoulder and, as it happened, a piece of his lung.

"Left-handed" was his bitter answer, because the answer seemed obvious.

Now he knows better. He knows he got caught on a technicality.

"He didn't ask me what I was BEFORE I lost my arm," Mr. LeBlanc remembers, in which case the answer would have been different — with very different consequences. Losing one's dominant arm in combat qualified as a "major" injury; losing the other one was "minor."

Mr. LeBlanc soon retired from the Marine Corps after two years with an injury judged as 90 percent disability, which qualified him for all of $156 a month.

It wasn't until five years later, when he was working for the Veterans Administration, that Mr. LeBlanc "realized I was getting (expletive deleted)."

He reapplied to the Veterans Administration for benefits, and at last corrected the error, hiking his disability pay with a new rating of 100 percent disability.

Those 10 percentage points made a world of difference. The checks increased to almost $700 a month then and about $2,000 a month today.

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[BOSSHOG]

1. Its really a good thing

that cowardly flag waving chickenhawks who support our troops won't ever have to go through that. Freaking absurdity squared. He could file for back pay but he'd be dead 20 years before his case was adjudicated. Meanwhile conservatives keep on supporting.