ALBANY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES, November 19, 2020 /EINPresswire.com/ -- An organized group of medical patients, who are also former military service veterans at an Army base in Alabama, is accusing the Dept. of Veterans Affairs agency of mishandling and corrupting the legal processing of their disability claims based on environmental toxic exposures. The benefit program is commonly known as the Compensation & Pension program and is largely run by a chain of bureaucrat employees who are not holding any medical academic background. This includes the VA Secretary, Robert Wilkie.

According to the group, the news media has been generally describing a false narrative about what is, or is not, happening within the legal process that’s been established by the VA for them to obtain a disability rating. The specific part of the process that applies to those who are filing for disability claims with an underlying cause of environmental or hazardous toxic exposures from military service, is generally considered by most veteran’s groups to be broken or corrupted. “There is no legislative authority that can be found across the VA body of claims regulations that allows for the VA to single out toxic exposure disability cases and then refuse to rate them.” said Sue Frasier, who is the national activist for the Facebook group known as Toxic Exposure Army Veterans of Fort McClellan.

The veterans group asserts the fact that the VA process for toxic exposure disability ratings are the chaotic product of evolution, instead of a soundly constructed patient review process by way of academic medical design. The VA tries to “reinvent” the entire industry of environmental health under their own agency banner, while not tapping into or aligning with the existing standards for patient reviews that are already in place for civilians at the Environmental Protection Agency or Center For Disease Control. The outcome is a conflicted and incomprehensible nightmare for the veterans.

“From start to finish, the entire VA process is absent of any licensed Environmental Health industry workers of any kind” said Frasier. “Not the exam doctors; not the Raters; not the lawyers for the veterans legal cases; not the veterans social membership clubs who provide the claims representation services; and especially not the VA Environmental Health Office in Washington DC” added Frasier. “Even the VA filing forms are a confused mess.” she said.

The group points to one disinformation example where the VA refers the veterans to an alleged employee office at VA Hospitals, which is described on their agency website as an Environmental Health Coordinator. But the veterans say that no such employee job even exists. They have found themselves steered into a clerical business office at VA Hospitals where the employees there are bewildered about what they were supposed to be providing as a clerical service to toxic exposure veterans.

Derrick Iozzio of El Paso, Texas is a veteran of Fort McClellan and says:
“I was stationed at Ft McClellan and do believe that I was exposed to toxic chemicals that were stored, used or otherwise deployed in and around Ft McClellan. I have various medical conditions that I believe may have been caused by this exposure. These conditions have not yet been addressed by the VA.”

Veteran Kenneth Johnson of Houston, Texas has said:
“I personally have reached out to a number of law firms that will not touch this case for some reason or other. These are firms designed to help veterans. As we speak, (I have) just received another letter from another reputable law firm rejecting my claim (for assistance from them).”

Veteran Maxine Sumrow in Georgia has said:
“(I am) concerned about the resultant effects from toxicity that has caused (my medical) issues.”

Fort McClellan Veterans have been working tirelessly for over a year at the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee to obtain a new investigative report from the GAO Office which is predicted to solve some of the barrier issues at the VA. The national COVID emergency has slowed their progress at the Committee for this 116th term.

The veterans group wants the public to know that locking out entire populations of medical patients from their military service disability benefits, is a course of action that’s done by unqualified VA bureaucrats that’s not supported in any existing federal agency law. “We consider it to meet the legal test for patient abuse” said Sue Frasier of Albany, NY.

Susan R Frasier
Toxic Exposure Army Veterans of Fort McClellan
ft_mcclellan_vets1@yahoo.com
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