Our High-Intensity VCS Advocacy Highlighted by NEWSWEEK, Dallas Morning News, CNN, and NextGov

Your update this week contains items highlighting our high-intensity advocacy for veterans' education benefits, Gulf War illness research, plus healthcare and disability benefits for veterans with PTSD and TBI. 

VCS Advocates for GI Bill

On September 16, VCS sent a Freedom of Information Act to VA to get facts about VA's progress on the Post-9/11 GI Bill.  We wanted to know how many claims were filed, how many were paid, and how long VA took to process claims.

A few days later, VA told reporters only 11 percent of veterans' GI Bill claims were processed, effectively leaving 240,000 or more veterans in no man's land without an answer and without money.  Under the leadership of VA's new Secretary, Eric Shiseki, VA employees pulled a rabbit out of a hat - thousands of them.  VA ordered 58 Veterans Benefits Administration offices, notorious or disability claim delays and denials, to open their doors to about 8,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

In what can only be described as a miracle, VA paid $3,000 advances to all of them using paper checks.  VCS agrees with Bob Brewin, a reporter at NextGov: "Here's a real "Hooah" for the top leadership at the Veterans Affairs Department."

Even CNN chimed in with a quote from VCS about Shinseki: "Now over the next few months can he sustain this and get the correct amount of money in the correct time" to veterans?

VCS Leads Fight for Gulf War Veterans

Last week, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Robert Byrd (D-WV), Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) added $12 million in funding to the military appropriations bill to fund the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program's Gulf War Illness Research Program, an effort to identify treatments to provide relief for the estimated 175,000 veterans still suffering from multi symptom illness.  A few days before the key vote, VCS wrote Senators and ask them to support veterans.  VCS thanks the five Senators for remembering our veterans of the 1991 war in Kuwait and Iraq.

The Dallas Morning News published a front page article highlighting our VCS advocacy for the vital Gulf War Illness research conducted by Dr. Robert Haley at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.  Desert Storm veterans need help: VCS urges Congress, VA, and UT to resolve this contract crisis, otherwise we may never learn why 175,000 of us remain ill 19 years after the war began.

Newsweek Features VCS Efforts on TBI and PTSD

Thanks to information provided by VCS, Jamie Reno at NEWSWEEK magazine shared an ominous finding about the surge in PTSD and TBI cases among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans: "And the problem will likely get worse before it gets better: up to 1 million new veteran patients are expected to flood the VA by the end of 2013." 

VCS Thanks Our Supporters

As the late Molly Ivans implored all Americans, we need to go out on the streets and bang pots and pans until we make sure every service member comes home and every veteran receives prompt and high-quality healthcare and disability benefits from VA.

Best, Paul Sullivan