In watching a report on the show 60 Minutes tonight, I was pretty disgusted with the way our Veterans are being treated, or should I say mistreated.  It showed where the priorities for our government really are when it comes to money.

The story detailed how many of the men and women that have served our country are having their claims for compensation for injuries that occurred in combat, are being delayed or in many cases denied by the VA.  In many of the cases former soldiers that fought in the Vietnam War are still awaiting fair compensation for combat related injuries they still suffer today.  They are being force to prove they were even in combat and not just in the military, because the government says they have not record of them in the war. The story detailed the backlog of paperwork from claims filed years ago that have not even been reviewed.  They covered the incentive program that was setup to increase the turnaround time in getting claims filed, and how that program has been the cause of many mistakes and even denials in compensation.  Workers that were in charge of processing these claims were more interested in getting the bonuses for getting the claims filed, that they failed to properly review the claims before submitting  them.  This also caused delays in soldiers even getting an initial response back on their claims.  Many soldiers from the most recent wars are being denied because they have to prove they were even involved in the war.

Now what bothers me the most about this lack of organization in paperwork is that they never seem to have these issues with the Internal Revenue Service.  If you owe money for taxes, that paperwork is processed so rapidly it’s not even funny!  They can tell you in an instant if you owe money for taxes from 20 years ago at the stroke of a key on their computers.  I mean, the tracking of taxes has to be as just as difficult as tracking someone’s military time and status.  We even get our tax refunds in a timely manner.  Why can’t we get paperwork at least reviewed in that same manner for the men and women who have fought and suffered injuries for this country?  Is it not just as important?  How long does it take to file the retirement benefits and compensation for a retired staff person of the VA?  I am willing to bet they are not having backlogs in filing that paperwork!  I do understand that the scale in which we they are getting these claims for veterans is way more than those retiring from the government or VA, that goes without question.  But we owe our veterans more than this.  We owe more to them than to treat them like some used piece of gum you just throw away when you are finished with it.  Look what they are giving up to protect us from what so many other countries have to deal with.

We owe it to our Veterans to fix this…