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After members of our armed forces bravely serve their nation, they sometimes come home to find themselves battling another enemy---within their own government. Using decades of case histories, statistics, and firsthand accounts, Martin Schram exposes a shocking culture of antagonism toward veterans by the very agency---the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)---that was formed to serve them.
Schram places our veterans’ current struggles within historical context, going back to the Bonus Army of beleaguered World War I vets who camped out on Washington’s national mall in 1932, demanding their promised benefits, only to be turned away by their own brethren in the U.S. Army---led by future military heroes Douglas MacArthur, George S. Patton Jr., and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Readers will be angered to learn of the legions of veterans---from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf Wars---who are routinely denied benefits to which they are entitled and who die while awaiting benefit reviews that are stalled by institutionalized delays. And they will be downright outraged by the results of a 2002 Mystery Caller test that showed VA representatives treating help-line callers with condescension and even ridicule---one service rep is shown laughing and hanging up on a caller---and providing “completely correct” answers to questions regarding care and compensation just19 percent of the time.
In the most intimate segment of the book, we meet Gulf War vet Bill Florey, who contracted a rare cancer after his exposure to Iraqi chemical weapons that were mistakenly detonated by the U.S. Army. Florey’s crucial medical tests were delayed, he was denied service-related compensation he deserved, and he died before a government study finally linked the exposure to his form of cancer. Schram also highlights accounts of shameless deception of our soldiers, including misleading information provided by recruiters, and discloses how Iraq and Afghanistan war vets were being denied benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder---even after diagnoses by the VA’s own doctors."
The author not only exposes a chilling pattern of institutional neglect, delay, and denial, but also points us toward solutions: the outsourcing of expertise, the institution of a “Vet-med card,” and the elimination of negative-incentive bonuses for VA officials, to name a few. Schram’s bold bugle call, sounded on behalf of our nation’s beleaguered servicemen and -women, culminates with a proposal to reinvent what has become a department of veterans’ adversaries by giving the VA a new name that makes clear its true mission---the Department of Veterans’ Advocacy.
Review:
Government agencies suffer all too often from mind-bogglingly abstruse procedures and bureaucratic malaise, but Martin Schram's expose of the Department of Veterans Affairs makes the agency appear downright Kafkaesque, particularly in its handling of claims filed by disabled veterans. There's Garrett Anderson, a national guardsman whose 2005 claim was denied after the VA determined... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) that his extensive shrapnel wounds from a roadside bomb in Iraq were "not service connected." There's Bill Florey, whose exposure to sarin gas during Gulf War I entitled him to zero benefits when he developed brain cancer a decade later because he hadn't shown any symptoms within one year of discharge — even though the VA knew of an ongoing study linking brain cancer to sarin gas exposure. Florey subsequently died. And then there's the $3.8 million in performance bonuses awarded to senior officials in the VA in 2006, just a few months after many of those same officials had overseen a $1 billion budget shortfall, resulting in the loss of benefits to wounded vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Schram depicts an understaffed, incompetent VA defending itself in baffling legalese against those who care enough to question it: the occasional Congressional committee, a turf-conscious Department of Defense and, of course, the veterans themselves, who are still waiting for 390,000 of their claims to be processed. Although the Government Accountability Office, that Cassandra of government agencies, issues scathing reports of VA ineffectiveness year after year, Schram argues that the real problem goes unchallenged. Undertrained VA adjudicators, most of whom never meet their claimants, have developed a mindset that most veterans are hangers-on who present invalid claims in order to rip off the government. The fundamental problem isn't financial, he says. It's cultural. The VA, out of some skewed rewards system, has instilled a relentless determination to stall or avoid payments to veterans. Schram tends to force his point when the facts would suffice. And he might have condensed the numerical data into tables rather than subjecting the reader to numerous GAO excerpts. But despite its flaws, the book asks a compelling question: When the VA has established several state-of-the-art hospitals and can provide high-quality medical care, why does it still fail to consistently offer even the most basic services to all disabled vets? Schram offers some interesting solutions to the VA's problems, such as offering a "Vet-med" card, similar to a Medicare card, that would enable a vet to get help at any local medical facility. He asks the VA to give veterans the benefit of the doubt in filing claims rather than leaving the burden of proof on men and women who are often struggling with severe health and financial challenges. And he would rename the organization the "Department of Veterans' Advocacy." While the VA has made some recent improvements — converting to an electronic application process and offering five years of free health care immediately following active service — it seems far from adopting the kind of systemic changes that Schram suggests. Last year the VA effectively killed two congressional bills that would have altered the adversarial attitude toward veterans. Those bills would have required the VA to pay $500 per month to vets whose claims appeals extend more than 180 days and to adopt an auditing system similar to the IRS rather than investigate every claim. In congressional testimony, the VA argued that the first bill would "unjustly enrich" many claimants and the second would give vets "excellent odds" of cheating the government. So much for cultural change. Schram's book lacks the dramatic appeal of great investigative journalism, but he should be commended for presenting a fairly cohesive exploration of the VA's numerous faults. He notes one anecdotal but perhaps telling incident. In an upscale bar near the White House, a VA administrator bragged that he'd spent the afternoon immersed in medical books, extracting enough information to cast doubt on the validity of one veteran's claim, declaring his day's triumph: "De-nied! De-nied! De-nied!" Until the VA is forced out of its cultural entrenchment, such denials will remain commonplace. The question is: Who will do the forcing? Kim Ponders, a former Air Force flyer, is at work on a memoir. Reviewed by Kim Ponders, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Synopsis:
An award-winning Washington journalist reports firsthand accounts that expose the shameless mistreatment of America's young servicemen and women--from recruiters' deceptions and a lack of armor in battle to shoddy, disgusting conditions at Walter Reed and other medical facilities.
Synopsis:
After members of our armed forces bravely serve their nation, they sometimes come home to find themselves battling another enemy—within their own government. Using decades of case histories, statistics, and firsthand accounts, award-winning Washington journalist Martin Schram exposes a shocking culture of antagonism toward veterans by the very agency—the Department of Veterans Affairs—that was formed to serve them.
Vets Under Siege reveals the shameless lack of care shown to our young servicemen and -women, from recruiters deceptions and a lack of armor in battle to shoddy, disgusting conditions at Walter Reed and other medical facilities, and looks back to examine the innumerable postwar battles our veterans have had to wage for proper treatment, from World War II to today. Martin Schrams bold bugle call, sounded on behalf of our nations beleaguered servicemen and -women, lays bare a chilling pattern of institutional negligence, delay, and denial, and points the way forward with definitive solutions to a national disgrace.
Martin Schram is the author of five books and has been national affairs correspondent for The Washington Post, Washington bureau chief for Newsday, and a television documentary executive. His nationally syndicated column appears in more than four hundred newspapers.
Vets Under Siege: How America Deceives and Dishonors Those Who Fight Our Battles
Used Hardcover
Martin Schram
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320 pages
Thomas Dunne Books -
English9780312375737
Reviews:
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
An award-winning Washington journalist reports firsthand accounts that expose the shameless mistreatment of America's young servicemen and women--from recruiters' deceptions and a lack of armor in battle to shoddy, disgusting conditions at Walter Reed and other medical facilities.
"Synopsis"
by Netread,
After members of our armed forces bravely serve their nation, they sometimes come home to find themselves battling another enemy—within their own government. Using decades of case histories, statistics, and firsthand accounts, award-winning Washington journalist Martin Schram exposes a shocking culture of antagonism toward veterans by the very agency—the Department of Veterans Affairs—that was formed to serve them.
Vets Under Siege reveals the shameless lack of care shown to our young servicemen and -women, from recruiters deceptions and a lack of armor in battle to shoddy, disgusting conditions at Walter Reed and other medical facilities, and looks back to examine the innumerable postwar battles our veterans have had to wage for proper treatment, from World War II to today. Martin Schrams bold bugle call, sounded on behalf of our nations beleaguered servicemen and -women, lays bare a chilling pattern of institutional negligence, delay, and denial, and points the way forward with definitive solutions to a national disgrace.
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