Lawsuit: Veterans Affairs has failed to prevent suicides
By PAUL ELIAS Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs isn't doing enough to prevent suicide and provide adequate medical care for Americans who have served in the armed forces, a class-action lawsuit that goes to trial this week charges.

The lawsuit, filed in July by two nonprofit groups representing military veterans, accuses the agency of inadequately addressing a "rising tide" of mental health problems, especially post-traumatic stress disorder.

But government lawyers say the VA has been devoting more resources to mental health and making suicide prevention a top priority. They also argue that the courts don't have the authority to tell the department how it should operate.

The trial is set to begin Monday in a San Francisco federal court.

An average of 18 military veterans kill themselves each day, and five of them are under VA care when they commit suicide, according to a December e-mail between top VA officials that was filed as part of the federal lawsuit.

"That failure to provide care is manifesting itself in an epidemic of suicides," the veterans groups wrote in court papers filed Thursday.

A study released this week by the RAND Corp. estimates that 300,000 U.S. troops - about 20 percent of those deployed - are suffering from depression or post-traumatic stress from serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We find that the VA has simply not devoted enough resources," said Gordon Erspamer, the lawyer representing the veterans groups. "They don't have enough psychiatrists."

The lawsuit also alleges that the VA takes too long to pay disability claims and that its internal appellate process unconstitutionally denies veterans their right to take their complaints to court.

The groups are asking U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti, a World War II U.S. Army veteran, to order the VA to drastically overhaul its system. Conti is hearing the trial without a jury.

"What I would like to see from the VA is that they actually treat patients with respect," said Bob Handy, head of the Veterans United for Truth, one of the groups suing the agency.

Handy, 76, who retired from the Navy in 1970, said he founded the veterans group in 2004 after hearing myriad complaints from veterans about their treatment at the VA when he was a member of the Veterans Caucus of the state Democratic Party. The department acknowledges in court papers that it takes on average about 180 days to decide whether to approve a disability claim.

"I would just like to see the VA do the honorable thing," said Handy, who is expected to testify during the weeklong trial.

Justice Department spokeswoman Carrie Nelson declined comment Friday.

But government lawyers have filed court papers arguing that the courts have no authority to tell the VA how to operate and no business wading into the everyday management of a sprawling medical network that includes 153 medical centers nationwide.

The veterans are asking the judge "to administer the programs of the second largest Cabinet-level agency, a task for which Congress and the executive branch are better suited," government lawyers wrote in court papers.

If the judge ordered an overhaul, he would be responsible for such things as employees workloads, hours of operations, facility locations, the number of medical professionals employed, and "even the decision whether to offer individual or group therapy to patients with" post-traumatic stress, the papers said.

The VA also said it is besieged with an unprecedented number of claims, which have grown from 675,000 in 2001 to 838,000 in 2007. The rise is prompted not from the current war, but from veterans growing older, government lawyers said.

"The largest component of these new claims is the aging veteran population of the Vietnam and Cold War eras," the government filing stated. "As they age, older veterans may lose employment-related health care, prompting them to seek VA benefits for the first time."

Government lawyers in their filings defended its average claims processing time as "reasonable," given that it has to prove the veterans disability was incurred during service time.

They also noted the VA will spend $3.8 billion for fiscal year 2008 on mental health and announced a policy in June that requires all medical centers to have mental health staff available all the time to provide urgent care. They said that "suicide prevention is a singular priority for the VA."

The VA "has hired over 3,700 new mental health professionals in the last two and a half years, bringing the total number of mental health professionals within VA to just under 17,000. This hiring effort continues," they said.

2008-04-20 12:19:39 GMT

I'm interested to see if the shortage of VA funds will be brought up in this suit. Its really what started it all.

Originally Congress allotted over 60? Million to fund the VA on the PTSD program but left it up to the VAs discretion on when to distribute the funding. When the New Vets reported to the VA for enrollment they were told there was no Funding for them.

The GAO did a audit on the VA and found out that the VA had Diverted about 40?Million Dollars of the money to a project that was not determined. The point here is that Congress Allotted the Money for a specific program and left it up to the VA when to distribute it as needed, Congress DID NOT tell the VA to Divert the funds to some unknown program while New Veterans have to wait with no help in sight.


*Note"
My Money amounts above might be greater because, I'm writing from memory, but I do remember the facts and I correspond With Paul Sullivan (founder of Veterans for Common Sense) Regularly.

Suit claiming shoddy treatment of veterans goes to trial in S.F.

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer


Monday, April 21, 2008

(04-21) 17:30 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- More than 120 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq commit suicide every week 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 in San Francisco.

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," Gordon Erspamer, lawyer for two advocacy groups, said in an opening statement at the trial of a nationwide lawsuit.

He said veterans are committing suicide at the rate of 18 a day - a number acknowledged by a VA official in a Dec. 15 e-mail - and 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 in their lawsuit - better and faster mental health care, and more rights for veterans appealing denials of benefits - are beyond the judge's authority.

"Of course we're obliged to provide health care," Lepley said, but "the court does not have standards to determine the speed or the scope or the level of that care."

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

If the advocates can prove their claims, Conti said in his ruling, they would show that "thousands of veterans, if not more, are suffering grievous injuries as the result of their inability to procure desperately needed and obviously deserved health care."

He also ruled that veterans are legally entitled to five years of government-provided health care after leaving the service, despite federal officials' argument that they are required to provide only as much care as the VA's budget allows in a given year.

But at a later hearing, Conti indicated he was uncertain about his authority to require spending on particular types of health care. The lawsuit plaintiffs - Veterans for Common Sense in Washington, D.C., , which claims 11,500 members, and Veterans United for Truth, a Santa Barbara 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 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 lawsuit 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.

"The time delays are staggering," Erspamer, the plaintiffs' lawyer, told Conti on Monday. Although the VA says it decides the typical claim for benefits in six months, he said, the agency takes far longer to review post-traumatic stress claims, and four years or more for the government to hear veterans' appeals of denied treatment.

Veterans who seek benefits within the VA's grievance system have no right to a lawyer and no right to demand records or question opposing witnesses, Erspamer said. The plaintiffs want Conti to grant those rights and to require the agency to set a timetable for deciding claims.

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 hot line.

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."

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

Attorney leading suit a veteran in battling VA
C.W. Nevius

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Gordon Erspamer, the attorney who brought the lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs that went to trial this week in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, is a big, unresponsive government agency's worst nightmare.

He's a rainmaker attorney for a major firm in the city who has set aside time to take legal action that doesn't earn a penny. And besides that, he's got a compelling and personal back story and a chip on his shoulder to prove it.

Erspamer's cause since the late '70s has been the rights of armed forces veterans, and this week's trial has the VA squirming over a shocking rate of suicides among vets and has captured the national spotlight.

The trial led the CBS Evening News this week, and Erspamer says he's getting thousands of e-mails and calls from veterans and media outlets.

Five years ago, he admits, the American public probably couldn't have told you what post-traumatic stress disorder was. Now they are not only aware of the number of vets who are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD - Erspamer estimates it will be one-third of the 1.7 million who served - but they are ready to look critically at how they've been treated.

"If you add up the veterans' suicides among those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and compare it to the total combat deaths, the veteran suicides are higher," says Erspamer, who introduced a VA e-mail at the trial that showed an average of 18 vets a day are committing suicide. "The VA doesn't want that out."

Erspamer is working the case pro bono with the support of his employer, the high-powered international law firm Morrison & Foerster. This isn't his area of interest. He's a well-regarded partner in the firm who is considered an expert in energy litigation.

But although the case has already taken him away from his regular practice for almost four months, Erspamer says this is only the beginning of the journey.

"I have no doubt in my mind that this will go to the Supreme Court," he said in an interview this week. "But this is not only legally correct, it is morally correct. For me, this is personal."

His father, Ernest, was one of the "atomic veterans" exposed to large doses of radiation during bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946. When his father developed incurable leukemia 33 years later, Erspamer, a year out of the University of Michigan law school, was frustrated at the lack of governmental support for veterans.

"My dad said, 'I don't want to spend the last year of my life fighting the VA,' " Erspamer says. "So I carried it on for him."

His father died in 1980, but it took 10 years for Erspamer to manage to get disability and death benefits from the VA.

"We won $90,000," he says. "And to tell you the truth, I probably spent $200,000 of time working on the case."

The process of such cases - long delays, endless appeals and slow response - has become a common complaint among veterans. But the difference is that many of them never seem to get the payoff at the end.

Erspamer says another sailor, who was on the ship with his father in 1946, took the legal argument for his dad's case and wrote across the top of the page: "I have the same issues as Ernest Erspamer. The only difference is his son is a lawyer."

Erspamer says the appeal was returned with a single word - "denied."

It was stories like that that kept Erspamer, whose legal field is energy law, involved in veterans' causes. It has turned out to be an unexpectedly wrenching experience. At the trial on Tuesday, a woman stood up in the courtroom and began to scream about "eating our children for profit."

"I have not cried since my father died," he says, "but some of the stories we've heard (in the current case) brought tears to my eyes. That woman was clearly one of them - more in distress than angry."

He gets calls at all hours. A recent one came from San Diego, from a 24-year-old soldier named Terry. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded on a wall above his head and left him with brain trauma and PTSD.

He was awarded benefits, but such a small amount that it was impossible to hold his life together. His wife left him, his house was repossessed by the bank, and when he reached Erspamer, he was living on the couch of a friend, a fellow vet.

Asked to tell his story, Terry got on the phone but got only a few words out before the hopelessness of his situation overwhelmed him and he began to weep uncontrollably.

"We'll have to call you back," his friend said and hung up.

Erspamer has high hopes for this case, although he expects that it may take five or six years to work its way through the courts. A win would mean, at least in theory, a quicker response to claims and more rights to appeal for veterans, although Erspamer puts it more succinctly.

"It would mean that you can't treat them like crap, to be blunt," he says.

His dad would be proud.

In February, Bush administration lawyers argued that veterans from the "war on terror," have no right to "any particular medical service" other than what the VA deems is best. This is due to another class-action lawsuit against the Bush administration by veterans who are being denied mental health care because the administration alleges that money appropriated by Congress for that purpose was meant "to authorize, but not require, medical [mental] care for veterans."

This begs the question, why else was the money appropriated if it was not meant for mental care? Imagine the administration using the same reasoning for defense appropriations. I hardly doubt I would ever hear administration lawyers denying the military tanks or planes because they claimed that the money appropriated for them did not "require" their use.

Yet, we have a President who fights in court to deny mental care for veterans while officials at his Veterans Affairs Department tells each other in emails that 18 veterans are committing suicide every day, while denying the very same facts in public.

The president has said that our veterans have created "a debt that we can never fully repay." One way to start would be to give them the medical care that they need.

[ The president has said that our veterans have created "a debt that we can never fully repay." One way to start would be to give them the medical care that they need ]

Another way would be to stop putting our men and women in harms way every time a President feels like it.

Counting down the days.

VA trial concludes with constrasting views of vet care

By PAUL ELIAS
Associated Press Writer



SAN FRANCISCO—A two-week trial that scrutinized the quality of health care for veterans concluded Wednesday with the judge questioning how much authority he had to order changes in the Department of Veterans Affairs, even if he found deficiencies.

"One of the problems I have in this case is this court is restricted by various statutes, binding regulations and case law," U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti told lawyers.

Justice Department lawyer Daniel Bensing, who was defending the system that serves nearly 6 million veterans, argued that the veterans groups suing the VA should take their case to Congress, not the courts.

Arturo Gonzalez, who represented the two veterans groups that sued, countered that the judge did have power to order changes because the VA's "system has crashed and it has been overwhelmed" by an increasing number of claims.

Last year, the VA processed 840,000 claims, an increase from 675,000 in 2001. The VA attributed the increased to aging Vietnam veterans with growing health problems. But Gonzalez argued that the VA is unprepared to care for the returning veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Conti, who heard the case without a jury, ordered lawyers for both sides to file additional legal documents on the issue.

The veterans groups sued the VA last year and accused it of failing to adequately provide mental health care, including inadequate suicide prevention, and taking too long to process claims. Internal VA e-mails disclosed during trial showed that four to five veterans under VA care commit suicide and another 1,000 veterans attempt suicide each month.

"The fact that veterans are killing themselves at alarming rates are undisputed," Gonzalez told the judge, urging him to order dramatic changes at the VA. Gonzalez suggested that the judge appoint a VA monitor who would report to the judge and ensure compliance with any court-ordered reforms.

Gonzalez also complained that it was taking the VA an average of about 180 days to decide whether to award a veteran benefits and that appeals of adverse decisions were taking years to resolve.

A study released earlier this month by the RAND Corp. estimates that 300,000 U.S. troops—about 20 percent of those deployed—are suffering from depression or post-traumatic stress from serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"These veterans need help," Gonzalez said. "The VA has demonstrated they won't do it on their own."

Bensing told the judge that the VA already considers addressing suicides and suicide attempts "a major priority." The mental health budget has increased from $3.2 billion to $3.5 billion annually, and the agency recently hired 3700 new mental health professionals, he noted.

"There is a special focus on suicide prevention," Bensing said. "Enormous steps are being taken out the field to enhance the mental health service to veterans."

Bensing conceded that it was taking too long to process VA claims, but that the agency was working to streamline a complicated system handling a record volume.

"Processing time is a troubling issue," Bensing said. "These waiting times do no represent a deprivation of care."

The judge ordered both sides to file post-trial legal papers by May 19, after which he said he would decide the issue.

Mike Ivy . Would you never defend this country so as to make sure no american was ever hurt defending our nation and people. Just surrender and give everything to the terrorists.
The congress authorised the iraq expedition and almost all of the democrats were in favor of it hillary included Killer kennedy wasnt there probably drunk. But the congress voted for it because it was thought to be the thing to do the side to be on. I know you will say saddam hussien didnt have anything to do with al queda or the sept 11 atttacks . But ( as i have asked jack b ) many times just how do you know what was going on with either of them. How?