For A Veteran, Disability Payment Is Long In Coming

[carlie]

"For a Veteran, Disability Payment Is Long in Coming

January 25, 2012

The year Leroy MacKlem lost his veterans disability compensation for a bad hip, gasoline cost 27 cents a gallon, a Yankee shortstop named Rizzuto was the American League’s most valuable player and President Harry S. Truman ordered production of the hydrogen bomb. It was 1950.

He is about to get it back. All of it.

In a case as much about government bungling as one man’s perseverance, the Department of Veterans Affairs said last week that it would end years of litigation and repay Mr. MacKlem, 88, for six decades’ worth of disputed disability compensation, about $400,000."

Full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/us/veteran-denied-disability-to-be-repaid-after-60-years.html?_r=1&

[Motherof3]

OH MY GOD! WOW!

[Pete53]

At 88 think of how much the government cheated him out of a better life. The VA and their apologists always say at least he got his money.

[john999]

He got his money with no interest, of course. I bet there are many WWII vets who are owed money but are now to old and sick to fight to get it. I think a lot of WWII vets got pretty high ratings right after discharge only to be reduced a few years later. These guys were trying to get on with their lives after the Great Depression and WWII so they just went forward. Same with Korean War and Vietnam where vets just allowed their ratings to be reduced because they were doing OK as young men/woman.20- 30 years later the disability drives them into a early retirement. If I had got proper rating when I was discharged I could have gone to college without having to work 30 hours a week using pitiful G.I. Bill which only covered about 40% of my expenses. Now I am fighting to get that money and it is taking almost a decade. I did get my degree which no one can take away from me (a lot of good it did me).

John