America asks a lot of our soldiers. We ask them to give up their family life, train to fight our battles and in return we give them red tape. Oh we do not mean to, we just do not know how to get our act together when it concerns our military. Stop and think about it a minute. Our government knows how to find you on or before April 15th every year. Our government penalizes you if you do not make your payment on April 15th. However, that same government does not pay a penalty for not properly handling the paperwork of returning war veterans - either disabled or not.



In February, 2007 the Washington Post broke the story about the neglect and delays at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Mind you Walter Reed is almost within walking distance to the capital and is also where a great deal of important government employees get their health care. It is now June, 2008 and what has happened in the past year to correct the inequities? Most say just a fresh coat of paint was applied. Time goes by - people forget. In a lot of respects this is true the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that there has been very little progress on rectifying the shortfalls at Walter Reed.

But wait we can not dump all over poor Walter Reed..there is plenty of blame to go around..The Department of Defense and The Veterans Administration need to be held accountable too because they cannot even agree on how to share data between themselves. There is no co-ordinated system that allows the 2 government bureaus to communicate by sharing military records. To make matters worse it is possible for a soldier to receive one rating from the DOD and a totally different rating from the VA. The current VA disability payment system was originated in 1945 and has changed very little according to the GAO to keep up with the growing world of technology. The military and VA have separate health care and also separate benefits systems and you can trust me both are as complicated as your current years IRS instructions.

What does that mean to the average soldier needing care? It means a back log of at least 6 months, with an estimated over 400,000 pending claims. The average wait time is generally around 183 days. If your claim is approved you are on to the next paper shuffle - if your claim is not approved then you can expect a wait of at least 657 days or just about 2 years. Can you wait? It should also be noted that the DOD and the VA have been working to improve their information sharing systems by implementing a electronic medical records database. Progress has been slow though..they have only been working together since 1998. In addition to the slowness there has been many calls for better manpower to get the paperwork under control but that call has gone unheeded. You see some disability claims require the paperwork be sent to the VA from the US Army