Apr 21, 2008 1:53 pm US/Pacific
Feds Defend Vets Administration Care In SF Lawsuit
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ―
A lawyer for the government told a federal judge in San Francisco Monday that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is running a "world class" medical care system and he urged the dismissal of lawsuit that claims otherwise.
VA officials are charged in the suit with failing to properly treat hundreds of thousands of veterans.
But a lawyer for two veterans' groups suing the VA told U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti that suicides and suicide attempts among the country's 35 million veterans are rising at alarming rates because of VA incompetence and failure to address the issue.
Attorney Gordon Erspamer charged that the VA is "an agency that is in denial" about inadequate care for veterans with stress disorders.
Erspamer said the agency's systems for providing mental health care for veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam and for processing their claims "are broken down and in crisis."
Monday is the first day of a two-week trial in which Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth are seeking a broad injunction requiring improvements in mental health services and claims procedures.
Erspamer said 126 veterans per week commit suicide and that the department, known as the VA, has a backlog of 650,000 claims. He said appeals of benefit claims can take a decade or more.
U.S. Justice Department attorney Richard Lepley told the judge, however, that the VA is taking aggressive measures to improve mental health services.
Lepley said the agency recently made "a huge increase" of 3,700 new professionals, or 25 percent, in the mental health staff at its 153 medical centers nationwide.
Lepley also contended the changes sought by the veterans' groups are either not within the judge's jurisdiction or should be heard in a different court, a specialized federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.
He said, "The court doesn't have the standards to dictate the speed or level or scope of that care."
Lepley argued that adding new legal procedures to the claims process could affect other federal programs, such as Social Security and farm subsidies, and could cause "the entire benefits claim system (to) grind to a halt."
Witnesses in the next two weeks will include legal and mental health experts, government officials and veterans' representatives.
Conti will decide the case without a jury because the veterans' groups are seeking court orders and are not asking for financial compensation. The judge is likely to take the case under consideration at the end of the trial and issue a written ruling at a later date.
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The Associated Press and Bay City News contributed to this report.)
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