Soldiers death in Afghanistan ruled a suicide

Posted on May 15, 2012 by VCS

APPLETON WI — A 25-year-old Appleton soldier who died last year in Afghanistan committed suicide, said the U.S. Army agency that investigated the death.

The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, based in Quantico, Va., concluded this spring that Garrick Eppinger Jr. died Sept. 17 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was serving with the Army Reserve’s Appleton-based 395th Ordnance Company.

The Armed Forces Medical Examiner classified the death as a suicide. The full report from the Army’s six-month investigation was not available Monday.

Eppinger’s family has yet to receive the report, and declined comment when contacted Monday.

Little information has been released about the death. Eppinger’s family said they were told he was shot while serving at Bagram Air Base, where he worked a desk job as a supply specialist for a munitions post.

More than 500 people attended Eppinger’s funeral in October in Appleton. He was buried with full military honors.

Eppinger leaves behind a 2-year-old daughter. He is a 2004 graduate of Appleton North High School.

Eppinger was awarded several military medals for his service and sacrifice, including the Army Commendation Medal, NATO Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal and Global War on Terrorism Service Medal. He was in his third overseas deployment, having previously served in Iraq in 2005 and 2009.

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THE IMPEDIMENTS STANDING IN THE WAY OF TIMELY DELIVERY OF BENEFITS

Posted on May 14, 2012 by VCS

Editorial Prepared by Gordon Erspammer JD lead Attorney for VCS-VUFT vs Eric K. Shinseki

I frequently am asked the fundamental question of why the benefit and health care delivery systems for veterans administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs are so dysfunctional. Like many things, there is no simple answer. In many ways, the VA is like a battleship, with powerful forces of inertia and mass frustrating the ability of administrators to make any meaningful changes. The unfortunate result is that all too often, the well-being of veterans and their families is compromised, and many never receive the benefits that Congress intended.

First, a major underlying factor in the present state of affairs is the structural impediments that insulate the VA from accountability. These include: (1) a statutory prohibition dating back to the Civil War that forbids veterans from paying counsel any money to represent them in any claims for benefits, which effectively eliminates access to counsel for most veterans; (2) the long history of a statutory bar to judicial review of VA claims decisions, which was finally changed in part in 1990 by the creation and opening of the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, a specialty court with very circumscribed powers and authority; and (3) the Feres doctrine, emanating from a Supreme Court decision during the Cold War, which in effect immunized the government from any liability to active-duty military personnel.

These provisions have combined to give the VA extraordinary latitude to do what it pleases, and to restrict veterans’ access to justice. The VA supports and clings to these restrictions on veterans’ civil rights, relying on outdated and inaccurate characterizations of its processes as nonadversarial. For far too long, the VA has resisted the rule of law and compliance and enforcement procedure, and required each veteran to repeat the same struggle for justice.

Second, the VA has never grappled with or solved the major problems that have plagued it for decades, such as the glaring lack of internal controls, the ever-expanding backlogs of claims and appeals, and the long waiting lists for health care. Instead, the VA simply resets its “goals” to account for further deterioration in timeliness, and the lines just get longer. From the management perspective, the VA hops from crisis to crisis, sometimes on multiple, simultaneous fronts, acting much like a player in a multipanel game of “Whack a Mole.”

And most recently, we have seen stories about Inspector General audits of how the VA “cooks the books” regarding statistical measures, such as patient wait times. And even last week I learned that, after extensive litigation and investigations into the VA’s manipulation of its electronic waiting lists for health care, the VA in June 2009 quietly redefined what the standard for being placed on a waiting list by requiring that patients have to wait for at least 120 days (rather than 30) before even being placed on the electronic waiting list. For suicidal veterans, we need to acknowledge that a delay in providing care may turn out to be a death sentence. If the VA’s eye were on the ball of its mission of serving veterans, it would not need to resort to applying the principles of “how to lie with statistics.” And the backlogs of claims and appeals and remands in the VA adjudications system for death and disability compensation have continued markedly to deteriorate. For example, how can anyone defend a system that requires five to 10 years to resolve a veteran’s appeal? This is a cardinal example of how justice delayed is justice denied.

Read more…http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/may/13/tp-the-impediments-standing-in-the-way-of-timely/

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Oakland Veterans Affairs’ Office Mishandled Claims, Inspector General Finds

Posted on May 14, 2012 by VCS

By Aaron Glantz

Staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Oakland office regularly made incorrect decisions when evaluating disability claims and failed to inform veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan that they are entitled to free mental health care, according to a report released today [PDF] by the agency’s inspector general.

The report also found that the office, which handles all disability claims for veterans who live from Bakersfield to the Oregon border, had failed to close claims that, at the time of an inspection last December, had languished for up to eight and a half years.

“Processing delays occurred because of unclear guidance,” the inspector general wrote. “As a result, veterans did not receive timely benefit payments.”

The inspector general also found several instances of veterans’ mail being misplaced, which the report said further contributed to delays and mistakes in deciding disability claims.

The report comes at a time of increasing scrutiny for the VA, which has seen the backlog of disability claims increase to 864,000 nationally under the Obama administration.

Over 45 percent of the more than 1.5 million veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have returned home and filed a disability claim. The most common claims granted have been for tinnitus, back pain and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The problem is particularly acute in Northern California, where returning soldiers must wait an average of 320 days for a decision, according to figures provided by the VA to Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton. Nearly 35,000 Northern California veterans are currently waiting for the department to issue a ruling on a disability claim; 82.5 percent have been waiting for at least 125 days.

The inspector general performed a limited review of 90 cases as part of its report and found the Oakland office failed to process 39 percent of them correctly. For cases related to traumatic brain injury, a signature wound of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the inspector general found 57 percent of claims were mishandled.

The errors in processing claims often led to delays and payments that were either too large or too small, the inspector general found.

“Each individual veteran has to go up against this error-ridden institution,” said Amy Fairweather, policy director at Swords to Plowshares, a San Francisco veteran services nonprofit. “The bottom line is poverty, untreated mental illness and obviously we see suicides.”

The numbers cited by the inspector general paint a starker picture than VA officials have previously acknowledged. In testimony before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs on April 18, Tom Murphy, head of the VA’s Compensation Service, said claims adjusters at the VA Oakland office made mistakes on 26 percent of claims.

The “audit throws into question (the) VA’s ability to honestly and accurately tell Congress how bad the situation in Oakland has deteriorated,” said Paul Sullivan, who serves as managing director of public affairs and veterans outreach for the Washington law firm Bergmann & Moore. Sullivan also testified at the hearing.

A VA spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request to comment for this story. In his written response to the report, the director of the Oakland office, Douglas Bragg, concurred with the inspector general’s findings.

In an e-mailed response to questions, Rep. Wally Herger, R-Marysville, said it was “appalling” that the inspector general found that the Oakland office failed to follow a department policy prescribing a monthly review of all claims older than one year.

Herger, who met in March with VA Under Secretary for Benefits Allison Hickey to discuss the claims backlog, said he would “continue to closely monitor the situation to ensure our veterans receive timely service.”

Bragg and Willie Clark, the agency’s western regional director, have agreed to answer questions on the backlog from the California congressional delegation at a public event at San Francisco’s War Memorial Building on May 21.

Veterans with pending claims have also been invited to attend the meeting and speak about their experience with delays. According to Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, VA staff will be available to help resolve claims in a separate meeting room.

In a statement responding to the inspector general’s report, Rep. McNerney, who sits on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, called the delays at the Oakland office “inexcusable.”

“The delays and inaccuracies we have seen are disturbing,” he said. “The veterans who are being subjected to these problems cannot wait for another report from the IG to shed light on the issue. The VA needs to take steps now to right these wrongs.”

In a separate report [PDF] also released today, the inspector general found the VA’s San Diego regional office made errors in 53 percent of the 79 claims sampled as part of its inspection. According to the VA, the San Diego office has a backlog of more than 30,000 claims, with 62.5 percent of veterans waiting more than four months for a decision:

“With today’s release of VA’s Inspector General’s audits for San Diego and Oakland, a reasonable person can conclude nearly all of the Veterans Benefits Administration remains deeply mired in crisis, with little chance of recovery unless President Obama and Congress act immediately.”

Aaron Glantz is an investigative reporter for California Watch, a project of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting. Find more California Watch storieshere.

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USA Today Editorial: Veterans are not dollar signs in uniform

Posted on May 14, 2012 by VCS

The 1944 GI bill helped catapult a generation of veterans into the middle class and beyond, financing the education of three future Supreme Court justices, three presidents and thousands of doctors and scientists while democratizing many of the nation’s leading universities.

  • A class for veterans in Tampa, Fla., last year.By Jim Stem, for USA TODAY

    A class for veterans in Tampa, Fla., last year.

By Jim Stem, for USA TODAY

A class for veterans in Tampa, Fla., last year.

  • In 2008, Congress, figuring what worked once would work again, passed an expanded law that promised the same opportunity to the new generation of veterans who had served since 9/11.

But some of those GIs are seeing their opportunity squandered by for-profit colleges with low graduation rates, high costs and high loan default rates. In fact, their new benefits might be propping up some schools that otherwise would struggle to meet federal rules.

The failings of many for-profits — and the risks they pose for both students and taxpayers — have been widely publicized.

The average cost for tuition and fees at for-profits is $14,487, 76% higher than the price that the average in-state student pays to attend a public institution. Yet by just about every academic measure, the for-profits deliver results inferior to those at traditional schools.

Opinions expressed in USA TODAY’s editorials are decided by its Editorial Board, a demographically and ideologically diverse group that is separate from USA TODAY’s news staff.

Most editorials are accompanied by an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature that allows readers to reach conclusions based on both sides of an argument rather than just the Editorial Board’s point of view.

At public universities that accept virtually all applicants, 31% of the students graduate within six years. The rate is nothing to brag about, but it beats the for-profits,where just 22% graduate. Students also withdraw at far higher rates —more than 50% at six of the schools most popular with veterans. Loan default rates are higher, an indication that students aren’t faring well.

Still, veterans are flocking to the for-profits. Among the top 10 recipients of GI educational dollars in the 2010-11 school year were eight companies that run for-profit schools, led by Apollo, parent of the University of Phoenix. Why so popular? Online courses, flexible hours and, in some cases, an effective education.

Many schools also aggressively mine the lucrative veterans market. Veterans look like “dollar signs in uniforms” to predatory schools, Theodore Daywalt, CEO of VetJobs, told a Senate hearing last year. The reason? A loophole in a federal law meant to ensure that for-profit schools are solid enough to attract some students who pay their own way.

These schools are required to get at least 10% of their revenue from sources other than federal student grants and loans. The idea is sound. But in a bizarre twist, veterans benefits do not count as federal funds and can be used to plump up the non-federal 10%. The for-profits’ trade association says many schools surpass the 10% threshold, but tellingly, it opposes raising the level to 15%.

Some schools also stretch the truth or worse. Thirteen of 15 colleges investigated by the Government Accountability Office gave agents posing as applicants questionable, even deceptive, pitches about graduation rates, guaranteed jobs or likely earnings.

This is a shoddy way to treat any student, and it’s a dubious way to invest taxpayer money. It’s just all the more offensive when applied to veterans. As Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, says, the GI benefit is a life-changing “one-time shot.”

His legislation to plug the 10% loophole is a sensible response. But until for-profits improve or student aid rules are overhauled, veterans will need to look out for themselves.

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Wanted:Veterans and military to stand against for-profit schools and their abuses.

Posted on May 11, 2012 by VCS
The for-profit education industry faces mounting criticism for its practice of targeting student veterans to take advantage of GI Bill funds. You might know that on April 27, President Obama took a stand against these abuses with an Executive Order to stop these bad actors from preying on Student Veterans.

This didn’t happen out of the blue – President Obama made the Executive Order following efforts by Veterans and VSO’s to call attention to damaging and fraudulent business practices resulting in harm to veterans.

  • 60% of all student veterans at for-profit colleges will drop out within a year of enrollment.
  • The for-profits industry consumes ½ of all GI Bill funding
  • For-profit colleges account for  8 out of the top 10 recipients of GI Bill funding
  • Graduates of for-profits face significantly higher rates of post-graduation unemployment,
  • Have higher student debt loads and exhaust or greatly diminish their GI Bill benefits

While these abuses have garnered attention from the highest levels of our government, much work remains. Changes in federal policy do not automatically result in changes in current behavior or redress damage already done. The industry is a potent lobbying and spending force. We need to be vigilant in our efforts to hold for-profit universities and their parent corporations accountable and to bring about true reform.

To do this, Veterans for Common Sense  has partnered with  Corporate Action Network and others in a comprehensive corporate campaign to fight back against the For-Profit Education Corporations that prey on student veterans.

The goal of the Student Vet Campaign is to publicly confront these corporations and force the for-profit universities to reform their abusive and practices. Our specific demands for reform will be rooted in the  actual experiences and needs of Student Veterans. To make this work, we need your stories, and the stories of those you know who are student veterans.

Our campaign with the Corporate Action Network will formally launch within the next week and is seeking veterans and family members who have been affected by the deceptive practices of for-profit universities to share their stories.

If that applies to you or someone you know and you would be interested in sharing please contact:

Phillip Anderson at 347-678-5042 or email shareyourstory@corporateactionnetwork.org.
We need your videos or testimonials in any form to spotlight these practices.

We look forward to standing together to end this abuse,

corporateactionnetwork.org

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