If you thought the stream of headlines from the Veterans Affairs scandal had run dry, you haven’t seen this new report from the Military Times revealing that thousands of vets may have been denied compensation for their traumatic brain injuries thanks to confusing paperwork.
VA officials said the department had issued a “number of guidance documents that may have created confusion regarding the policy” requiring the exams be done by certain doctors, resulting in a large number of former service members either being denied compensation or receiving a lower disability rating.
That means that, between 2007 and 2015, an upwards of 24,000 of our servicemen and women were denied needed aid to recover from brain trauma.
In a better-late-than-never effort to correct its mistake, the VA is now allowing vets to retake military exams to see if they did indeed suffer a TBI. If so, they will be properly compensated.
As a reminder, the VA is guilty of letting mismanagement jeopardize the care of our nation's finest. For years, veterans were subjected to dirty equipment, denied care because faulty documentation listed them as deceased, while hundreds of thousands of others were forced to wait for care for months at a time. How did VA Secretary Bob McDonald respond to the egregious wait times? He compared it to those pesky lines at Disney World.
Combined with the poor treatment of our vets and the lack of awareness is the lack of accountability within the VA. Few employees have been fired as a result of the scandal. On Thursday, we found out that an employee who had been let go may actually be getting her job back.
After yet another unacceptable report about the VA's treatment of vets, McDonald offered the biggest understatement of the year.
“We let these veterans down,” he said.