According to a VA workload report from spring of 2015, there had been 711,775 disability claims out of one million patients. However, the problem at hand is that a vast quantity of these veterans are appealing to the VA that they have been misdiagnosed. These veterans go for years without response to their appeals and therefor go untreated unless they pay for it themselves. The number of appealed claims reached as high as 266,179 in 2014 …show more content…
That however, is what the patient hears from their doctors, that in accepting this regulation, they will be relieved from duty and will receive the benefits of any other soldier, but in reality, this means that they will not receive any benefits and in many cases, end up in debt to the military and VA. The VA is only required to treat patients wounded physically or mentally while in service, while regulation 635-200 is defined as a preexisting condition, and in the process, it also retracts veterans from receiving disability pay and even requires them to pay the military a portion of their re-enlistment funds for an incomplete military contract. A Gale database article written by Joshua Kors also takes note that “One military official says doctors at his base are doing more than withholding this information from wounded soldiers; they're actually telling them the opposite: that if they go along with a 5-13, they'll get to keep their bonus and receive disability and medical benefits.” This problem does not seem to being dying out any time soon as records from the Defense Department show that from 2001 to 2006, there have been 5,600 cases of personality disorder, with the number of