Policy
Serving Those Who Served
Jason Hansman’s first experience with the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department didn’t go according to plan.
In the mid-2000s, the Iraq War vet developed a severe infection and sought care at the emergency room of the local hospital in his native Seattle. He had been home from his tour of duty for a couple of years, but he knew he could count on V.A. benefits to help him get the care he needed.
However, when he got to the emergency room, he was shocked at the response he received.
“I ended up going there and they were like, ‘Well, you’re not enrolled in the V.A.,’ and I’m like, ‘What? I’m in the military, I should be enrolled in the V.A. Can you look me up?’ ”
Hansman was told he needed to show his discharge paperwork or he would not receive medical service. Because he didn’t carry that paperwork with him, he was turned away. He then went to another emergency room where he received care, only to be on the hook for a $1,500 bill.
Hansman, now the senior program manager for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a New York City- and Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, eventually figured out how to enroll for V.A. benefits. The story doesn’t have quite the same ending for thousands of other veterans, however.
“I was lucky that I was stubborn at the time and was willing to go back and willing to see the system through and see the system provide me medical services in the end,” he said. “But I don’t think a lot of vets would.”
Nor is he only talking about former service members from the Pacific Northwest. Even in New York, considered by some to be near the top of the list in terms of assistance programs, veterans face miles of red tape, combined with a baffling maze of avenues to pursue that leave many not knowing the right place to go—in some cases causing them to eventually give up on the system. In other cases, services simply aren’t available and, on the healthcare side, patients can wait for weeks before seeing a doctor, as the recent V.A. scandal in Phoenix brought to light.
“If we’ve learned anything from Phoenix, it’s that issues that might be plaguing one V.A. are probably plaguing them all, or a lot of them,” Hansman said. “It’s kind of heartbreaking when you think about it that way. That when one veteran has a bad experience or a couple veterans have a bad experience, it’s probably indicative of a larger problem.”
It took just seconds for President Barack Obama, amid a barrage of shutter clicks in the White House press briefing room, to officially announce that Eric Shinseki was out as head of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
On May 30, Shinseki offered the president a resignation, and “with considerable regret, I accepted,” Obama said. But while the official announcement was over in a flash, the problems for the V.A. had been mounting for months. First there were reports that some 40 veterans died while awaiting medical care at the Phoenix V.A. hospital. As that scandal boiled over, a report from the Department of Veterans Affairs documented lengthy wait times for veterans to get medical care at many other V.A. hospitals across the nation.
In New York, the picture was rosier. Only one of the state’s V.A. facilities, Castle Point in the Hudson Valley, was flagged for further review. That positive picture serves as a microcosm of veterans’ assistance programs in New York, praised by some experts as among the best in the nation.
New York, which is home to nearly 900,000 veterans, has developed a multitude of programs that either supplement or go beyond what the federal government offers. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made it a priority to assist veterans, in March holding the first New York State Veterans and Military Families Summit, which brought together high-level elected officials, veterans affairs officials, veterans and military members to discuss areas of concern and devise solutions. Born out of that summit were programs about which state officials have expressed considerable optimism.
The state has also been taking steps to expand and improve programs that help veterans find jobs. One is the new Veterans Contracting Program, which establishes a statewide goal of 6 percent participation on state contracts by small businesses owned by veterans with service-connected disabilities. That target is twice as high as the federal government’s goal. As of Jan. 1, some $74 million in employment tax incentives were also made available to hire veterans who served after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In addition, the state has begun helping veterans’ families by expanding its Experience Counts program to allow veterans’ spouses to use licenses and training from other states for various professions in New York.
New York City has placed an emphasis on helping veterans find jobs, too, earmarking $100,000 of $400,000 for veterans’ programs in the fiscal year 2015 budget for veteran job-placement initiatives.
“The state of New York is a little bit ahead of the curve,” said Al Marco, CEO of VetsBridge.com, a recruitment service that helps veterans connect with employers. “They’re definitely probably up in the upper 30 percent or better of employer-friendly, veteran-friendly states across the country.”
Another area the state has begun to concentrate on of importance to veterans is mental health—a critical service, yet one that is nonetheless often stigmatized among veterans.
That focus comes at a time when Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are suffering from what has been called by some experts a “suicide epidemic” related to post-traumatic stress disorder and other service-related mental health illnesses.
State Sen. Lee Zeldin, an Army veteran, has taken up the cause in Albany, establishing a peer-to-peer counseling program to assist veterans with PTSD in a limited number of counties across the state. He said that it is important for those veterans to know they are not alone when people at home or work don’t understand what they’re going through, making them feel isolated.
“Unfortunately we’re losing too many as a result,” Zeldin said. “I know more people who I’ve been close with who have died after their service and who had PTSD than people I know who died in combat.”
Though New York offers a plethora of services for veterans, navigating the benefits system can pose a serious challenge, such that even those who know where to look for help can encounter significant hurdles.
Hansman tells the story of a veteran from New York City who took advantage of the G.I. Bill to go to college. While that benefit initially worked for him just as it was supposed to, halfway through the semester the V.A. pulled his certificate of eligibility, leaving him without benefits. As a result, the veteran’s life became a labyrinth of complications, and without the tuition assistance his finances fell into disarray.
Such travails are by no means out of the ordinary, Hansman said. In short, a tangled web of programs becomes a tangled mess of problems.
“We connected him with resources; we connected him with eviction prevention resources to keep him in his house,” Hansman said. “Where it got complicated … was we helped him navigate the V.A. system to find out what happened with his G.I. bill and how to fix it. How do we get the V.A. to pay him the money that they should have paid him? Right now that case is still pending, and that’s from a year and a half ago.”
Hansman said that applying for benefits through the federal V.A. department and Department of Defense can be a bureaucratic slog where part of the battle is often simply finding the right person who has the correct information to assist a veteran.
Advocates say the state and New York City are more efficient and straightforward in processing the benefits for which they are responsible, but there are still snarls. Additionally, a glut of nonprofit groups, combined with an array of city and state resources, in many instances finding the right person to help takes second place to finding the right program.
“As far as a veteran being able to go to the Yellow Pages and pick out a defense attorney who knows what they should know about representing veterans, I don’t think that’s possible at all at present,” said Gary Horton, who heads the Veterans Defense Program for the New York State Defenders Association.
While Horton, whose program is designed to help instruct public defense attorneys how to properly represent veterans, is involved with just one small piece of the veterans’ assistance realm, Hansman said the confusion Horton identifies extends to many areas.
“A lot of us don’t know what we’re eligible for,” he said. “The state and even the city don’t do what they could [to promote services].”
Assemblyman Félix Ortiz, who served in the Army from 1986 to 1988, has made it a priority to address not only PTSD but also the need for government and military agencies to follow up with veterans once they have returned home.
Ortiz illustrated the importance of that attention with the story of a young woman from his district in Brooklyn who returned from a stint in the military to her family’s home on 4th Avenue, not far from a subway line.
“On 4th Avenue as the subway passes, [it] makes noise. Well, she thought there was an attack. So she would wake up in the middle of the night screaming and yelling that she was hearing voices or hearing bombs coming down,” the lawmaker said. With proper assessment upon returning home, he added, the veteran and her family could have better managed those scenarios.
But even for veterans and families who know where to turn, sometimes making the first step to obtain help is the hardest. If stigmas associated with seeking assistance around issues like mental health are not overcome, the process can never get under way. Dr. Craig Bryan, associate director of the National Center for Veterans Studies, which in recent years has closely studied mental health issues among veterans, said that veterans often put off dealing with problems of this nature. Once they finally do seek help—if ever—the lengthy wait times at V.A. hospitals and government bureaucracy multiply their troubles.
“The group of individuals you least want to have to deal with frustration and hassles are individuals with mental health difficulties, who almost by definition are struggling with managing stress in their lives,” Bryan said. “So these barriers, these wait times, the hassles, the difficulty calling one place and being told, ‘We’re not the right phone number, you need to call somebody else,’ then you’ve got to wait on hold for an hour, all of these little things serve as barriers for veterans to get in.”
That’s where advocacy groups play a crucial role. Multiple advocates said it was critically important that nonprofits and organizations outside the government sphere offered supplemental assistance to veterans to help them untangle the bureacratic confusion and make the process of applying for benefits one that doesn’t exacerbate the various difficulties they face. In some instances, these groups can also help veterans financially. Zeldin said an eventual statewide expansion of the peer-to-peer program could be bolstered by individuals or outside groups helping to fund it.
The state is continuing to put more emphasis on military families, which also could help break down negative perceptions among veterans about seeking treatment. Ortiz’s focus on making sure military members are actively looked after upon their return home includes involving families in aiding with that process and equipping them to prepare for unique situations, such as the case of the veteran traumatized by the rumble of the subway.
The spotlight on veterans and the push to bring families into those discussions is illustrative of what advocates, legislators and government officials all say about the future of veterans’ benefits programs in New York: There is always more that can be done.
“You can never do enough,” Zeldin said. “As long as you have a veteran who is homeless on the street, without a job, without healthcare, there probably will never be a day we can sit back and say, ‘We’ve done enough.’Because they are literally willing to sacrifice everything. After having that willingness to sacrifice everything, to end up on the street without a roof over your head leaves a most important part of the mission for the community unfulfilled.”
A DIRECTORY OF SERVICES AVAILABLE FOR VETERANS
To access the state Division of Veterans Affairs informational website:
To access the federal Veterans Affairs Department informational website:
To access the Veterans Affairs Department website directory:
http://www.va.gov/site_map.htm
For a full list of Veterans Affairs Department contact phone numbers:
To learn about Veterans Affairs Department benefits:
1-800-827-1000
To contact the national veterans crisis line:
1-800-273-8255, press 1
To schedule an appointment with a New York State veterans counselor:
1-888-838-7697
For general information about Veterans Affairs Department facilities:
To learn about the Veterans Affairs Department’s healthcare benefits:
1-877-222-8387
To find Veterans Affairs Department hospitals or health clinics:
For information about the Veterans Affairs Department’s free healthcare and prescriptions program:
For information about post-traumatic stress disorder triggers and symptoms:
To learn about applying for returning servicemembers medical benefits:
To learn about the Veterans Affairs Department’s Veterans Health Identification Card program:
To find Veterans Affairs Department vet centers:
To find Veterans Affairs Department veterans benefits offices:
For information about the federal government’s veteran entrepreneur benefits:
To find Veterans Affairs Department regional loan centers:
To find Veterans Affairs Department cemetery information:
For information about the state’s Homes for Veterans program:
To find Veterans Affairs Department informational forms and applications:
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