VA is violating rights of wounded veterans, advocates allege at trial

The class-action suit seeks better and faster mental health care; the government says changes to the VA are beyond the judge's authority.

By BOB EGELKO, San Francisco Chronicle

Last update: April 21, 2008 - 8:42 PM

Print this story

More from Nation

SAN FRANCISCO - More than 120 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq commit suicide every week -- about 18 a day -- while the government stalls in granting returning troops the mental health treatment and benefits to which they are entitled, veterans advocates told a federal judge Monday.

The rights of hundreds of thousands of veterans are being violated by the Department of Veterans Affairs, "an agency that is in denial," and by a government health care system and appeals process for patients that is "broken down," lawyer Gordon Erspamer said in an opening statement at the trial of a class-action lawsuit brought by veterans groups.

He said the agency's backlog of disability claims now exceeds 650,000, an increase of 200,000 since the Iraq war started in 2003.

Justice Department lawyer Richard Lepley countered that the VA runs a "world-class health care system." He said the changes the plaintiffs seek -- better and faster mental health care, and more rights for veterans appealing denials of benefits -- are beyond the judge's authority.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti -- who is presiding over the nonjury trial expected to last two weeks -- ruled in January that the case could go to trial. In doing so, Conti, a conservative jurist and World War II veteran appointed by President Richard Nixon, rejected the government's argument that civil courts have no authority over the VA's medical decisions or how it handles grievances.

The lawsuit plaintiffs -- Veterans for Common Sense in Washington, D.C., which claims 11,500 members, and Veterans United for Truth, a Santa Barbara, Calif., group with 500 members -- want him to order the VA to provide immediate treatment for suicidal veterans and prompt care for those suffering from post-traumatic stress.

The trial follows publication of a Rand Corp. study last week that an estimated 300,000 U.S. troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, or 18.5 percent of the total, suffered from major depression or post-traumatic stress.

The suit is a proposed class action on behalf of 320,000 to 800,000 veterans or their survivors. The advocacy groups say the VA arbitrarily denies care and benefits to wounded veterans, forces them to wait months for treatment and years for benefits, and gives them little recourse when it rejects their medical claims.

However, Lepley, the government's lawyer, said the VA has undertaken a "huge staff increase" -- 20 percent in mental health, 25 percent in claims-processing -- and now provides one mental health staff member around the clock at every VA center, as well as a suicide-prevention hotline.

For those who do not need immediate care, he said, the agency has a policy of scheduling a mental health appointment within two weeks, and has reached that goal at 80 percent of its facilities.

"These kinds of medical decisions are not something that this court can inject itself into," Lepley said. He referred to the plaintiffs as "single-interest groups" and said the legal rights they seek in the VA benefit system, such as the involvement of lawyers, are "not in the patients' interest."

Recent Nation stories

SC lawmakers begin impeachment hearings on Gov. Sanford, focus on disappearance to Argentina - April 21, 2008

SC lawmakers begin impeachment hearings on Gov. Sanford, focus on disappearance to Argentina - Legislators irked for months over Gov. Mark Sanford's summertime vanishing act and his tearful revelation that he was in Argentina for a rendezvous with his lover plan to start debating a measure Tuesday that ultimately would remove him from office. More