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NEW YORK VETS TELL HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE OF

FRUSTRATIONS WITH VA -- "We are always on the

opposite side of the VA. Our question is, 'Why?'"

Story here... http://polhudson.
lohudblogs.com/2007/10/09/t
he-heartbreaking-frustrat
ion-of-veterans/

Story below:

-------------------------

The heartbreaking frustration of veterans

U.S. Rep. John Hall, D-Dover Plains, along with U.S. Reps. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., and Tim Walz, D-Minn. met in New Windsor today to listen to the stories of four veterans who have struggled to receive the benefits necessary to their recovery from service-related illnesses and injuries.

They gave two men a standing ovation. One was Sgt. Eddie Ryan, the 23-year-old Ulster County Marine who was shot twice in the head during friendly fire in Ramadi in April 2005.

More than two years later, Christopher and Angela Ryan continue to fight with the Department of Veterans Affairs to get Eddie the therapy he needs to continue his recovery.

Dressed in camouflage and wheeled in by a police sergeant from his hometown of Ellenville, Eddie Ryan told the congressmen that “I’d do it again.”

His parents told Hall and the others of the infected bed sore their son suffered at the VA hospital in Virginia, a result of laying in his own feces.

They successfully lobbied to get Eddie moved to the Helen Hayes Hospital in West Haverstraw, where he spent nearly a year before being discharged last year.

Now they are fighting to have his therapy sessions restored after they were nearly cut in half this summer.

“We are always on the opposite side of the VA,” Christopher Ryan said. “Our question is, ‘Why?’”

The three congressmen were from the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs.

The focus of the testimony today was the claims backlog, which Hall said totaled around 600,000.

They also heard from Alex Lazos a former Marine who suffered for years with debilitating post traumatic stress disorder.

He started getting benefits in August, more than three years after he first filed a claim. It was Lazos who got the other standing ovation.

Eddie Senior, a West Harrison veteran from Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm told the subcommittee how he’s still filing appeals 12 years after he left the service.

And though Ted Wolf, a Vietnam War veteran from Pomona, was too ill to attend, he submitted written testimony that detailed his fight against cancer and how the VA cut his benefits after deciding his cancer was in remission, which it was not.

Hall thanked the veterans for testifying and said he hoped their stories would lead to improvement in the system so others wouldn’t have to suffer in the same way.

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Larry Scott  --

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