I’ve been at this for a number of years and once tried to keep track of how many Hep claims showed up at the BVA on appeal. I researched this for my own claim all the way back to 1992, which is as far back as the BVA’s online files go. I watched the number grow and grow each succeeding year until it was approaching twelve or thirteen thousand. Last year (2011) something changed. All of a sudden you could only access the “top four hundred” as they phrased it. What? the rest weren’t important? Every claim is important to me. Each one can teach one something. To arbitrarily short sheet the table of contents seems a little suspicious so I decided to go back and see if anything else had been tampered with.
Ruh-oh, Rorge. Astro’s immortal phrase streaked through my mind. While there are now only 149 cases listed for 1992, the total number of documents listed is 664,549. Moving to 1993, there now are only 133 documents out of… hmmm, 664,549 total. Knowing there was something afoot, I moved forward a year and found 176 out of a total of…664,549 documents. Is it my conspiratorial nature to assume something is amiss? Can it be by a completely extraneous set of circumstances that Vets cumulatively file exactly the same number of claims and the denied appeal in exact aggregate amounts identically each year?
When VA elected to abridge the listings, they also removed the search engine that instructed you to put quotes around a word to get exactly what you wanted and weed out the chaff. Gone. Why is this? As Roseanne Rosannadana used to say “it always goes to show it’s something!” I suspect as much. The “something” apparently is an inartful attempt to camouflage reality. Limiting Vets’ search to just a paltry 400 claims of 11,875 possible seems somehow to be an attempt to restrict the flow of information. Ah, yes. The old Veteran friendly, we’re your best friend, pshaw, what claims? Administration we have all come to know and love.
My daddy used to say when they’re shaking hands with the southpaw, you better be wondering what’s in the north one. While my brother Veterans’ help sites all hold firmly to the belief that the VA is your best friend in this business, you have to look at the statistics. When the same sites swear the VSOs are independent and have no truck with the VA, look where they get their paycheck from. I had an argument with one old boy who was a former peckerchecker. He insisted they didn’t get one thin dime from VA. He’s right. Their moneys come from an act of Congress. Where, pray tell, do you suppose VA gets its funding? Same paymaster, different check number. Duh. No flies on me.
How VA thinks they can pass these numbers off without someone noticing speaks volumes to how they perceive our level of intelligence. Granted, most of us haven’t been invited to join Mensa, but I wager to say I can’t be the first to latch on to this disparity. What bothers me more is what the truth is and why we are being deprived of it. As Fox Mulder used to say “The truth is out there, Scully”.
asknod
Bethanie Spangenberg
kcraveiro
robinhoodesqvetsatty
Wesley McCauley
Veterans Claims Help 
No surprises here. I have said it before and I will say it again, this is no different than the usual deny, deny, deny. When Vets began relating their illnesses back to agent Orange what did the government do? Yep, deny, deny, deny. It would be most interesting and oh so time consuming to research the number of veterans exposed who were denied on their claims and marched off into the bright light without ever receiving their just compensation. And then almost by magic one day the VA said, “oh my goodness we should help these guys out” and fast track them through the system. Too bad, so sad that so many were never given just compensation but hey the VA is there for you. We shall once again lose many of our brothers before the government will actually respond to the fact that we are sick due to THEIR incompetence. Prior to terming it Hep-C we were known as “other”. Well it seems to me that being “other” infected meant that we were still infected does it not? Did the government stop using the cattle innoculators on troops? Yes but only for about 1 1/2 years at best. The facts are the facts unless you can successfully hide them until a great number are gone and have suffered through this innocuous disease. But don’t forget that the VA is there for you.