Veterans Affairs has meeting in Belleville on health care reforms, services

More than 30 veterans and family members gathered late Tuesday afternoon for a “Veterans Town Hall” meeting sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs at Lindenwood University’s auditorium, 2600 W. Main St, to discuss recent health care reforms, answer questions and hear feedback.

Most of the questions centered on problems individual veterans were experiencing in getting disability applications approved or clearing up problems with their service records.

Gary Raymond, 63, a combat medic during the Vietnam War, discovered he was suffering from Hepatitis C about 10 years ago, and still is suffering from a back injury acquired from a parachute training drop. His injuries and illness have made him too sick to work, Raymond told a panel of executives from the VA regional office in St. Louis.

Problem is, his VA records fail to document his injury or his hospital stay at Fort Bragg, N.C. To make matters worse, Raymond said he received a VA letter dismissing his claims.

“It said, ‘My symptoms are due to old age,’” Raymond said. “So my question is, ‘Why should I go out to find somebody to fight for me to have some type of plausible case for disability when what I have was caused by the military?”

Mitze Marsh, the director of the VA regional office, thanked Raymond for his military service, then recommended he talk to a VA representative after the meeting.

The meeting began with a progress report by the various VA officials on progress in providing more and better patient care.

Dr. Patricia Ten Haaf, the interim medical center director for the system that includes the John Cochran Hospital in St. Louis and the Jefferson Barracks VA Hospital in South St. Louis County, said nearly 1,000 staff members have been added last year, rising to the current total of 2,808. Meanwhile, more than 1,000 patients have joined the system, bringing last year’s total to nearly 59,000, Ten Haaf said.

“Our veterans have voted with their feet,” she said.

Meanwhile, the VA hospital system has interviewed more than 150 candidates for a permanent medical center director, she said.

“It’s quite an onerous task,” Ten Haaf said “They’ve been working hard and long on it.”

A veterans information fair ran from 2 to 4 p.m. outside the auditorium to provide veterans with the latest knowledge on programs and assistance available to them. A special section was available for post-9/11 veterans.

The VA has been the target of intense media and government scrutiny over the past two years concerning the quality of patient care and the amount of time patients must wait to see physicians.

In early September, the VA’s Office of Inspector General confirmed that more than one-third of the people thought to be seeking eligibility for VA benefits are deceased, and said many of them have been dead for more than four years.

In July, reports surfaced that an estimated 239,000 veterans died before they became eligible for benefits, or 28 percent of the nearly 850,000 veterans thought to be seeking these benefits. The OIG report said the situation is even worse — it said 307,000 names on the VA's list of pending enrollees were deceased. That's 35 percent of the 867,000 people on the list as of last year.

This story was originally published December 8, 2015 at 12:05 PM with the headline "Veterans Affairs has meeting in Belleville on health care reforms, services."