Disability system for veterans strays far from its official purpose

http://www.stripes.com/news/veterans/disability-system-for-veterans-strays-far-from-its-official-purpose-1.314501

Disability system for veterans strays far from its official purpose

By Alan Zarembo
Los Angeles Times (MCT)
Published: November 16, 2014

The room fell silent for seven minutes as Illinois Rep. Tammy Duckworth upbraided a government contractor.

"Shame on you," the congresswoman scolded Braulio Castillo at an oversight hearing in Washington, D.C., last year, accusing the business owner of gaming the veterans disability system. Castillo had filed a claim with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs after learning that a disability rating would give his technology company preferential standing for federal contracts.
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Duckworth directed her ire at Castillo, but the real culprit was the broad eligibility criteria of the disability system itself. The contractor had played by the rules for benefits and, as many Washington lawmakers know, those benefits cover ailments from sports injuries to bullet wounds, resulting in disability payouts that totaled $58 billion this fiscal year — up from $49 billion last year.

Routinely criticized in government reviews as out of touch with modern concepts of disability, the system has strayed far from its official purpose of compensating veterans for their lost earning capacity. Yet lawmakers are unwilling to support reforms — or even to criticize the system publicly.
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Amputees account for roughly 2,000 of the 904,839 Afghanistan and Iraq veterans on the disability rolls as of May. Though the VA did not provide figures on how many combat veterans are among the 3.9 million total beneficiaries, officials said they are a minority. More than 680,000 veterans in the system served during peacetime periods before 1991. The system pays monthly for nearly any medical condition that can be tied to the time a veteran was enlisted. Once benefits are awarded, they are usually for life — even in extreme circumstances. Castillo, for example, was charged this April with murdering his wife. If convicted, VA rules stipulate that his disability rating would drop to 10%, or about $130 a month, while he is in prison.
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