First of all, fraudulent PTSD claims are not clogging the VA system of claims for benefits and compensation. Not even close! It's a canard, an excuse. What's clogging the system is the appeals for denied claims for benefits and/or compensation. Anyone who thinks the claims backlog is bad ought to look at an appeals backlog growing at an exponential rate. The appeals backlog of more than 440,000 as of April has been precipitated by wrongfully denied veterans claims. It was not until Chief Justice Roberts sat in on the Appeals Board that we discovered 70% of the claims in appeals were wrongfully denied. "Well that's really startling, isn't it?" said Roberts. "In litigating with veterans, the government more often than not takes a position that is substantially unjustified?" The damage to the veteran's condition done by a wrongfully denied claim for benefits and/or compensation can be devastating.

If one is going to defend the system, one should at least make an attempt to advise oneself sufficiently. Unless, that is, one is a shill for the system.

Marine Corps veteran Steve Lowery, who won the Navy Cross in Vietnam, was denied a claim because the VA deemed the bullet and shrapnel wounds he received in the 1969 action that won one of his team the Congressional Medal of Honor were "not service related." Ask Navy SEAL veteran, Craig Sawyer, how he feels about a VA that told him to get to a hospital emergency room for treatment then refused to pay $15,000 in medical bills. What of the veteran who blew his brains out on the front steps of the Dayton VA Medical Center? Melodrama? What of the young woman who was under treatment at Pittsburgh VA when she entered her vehicle behind the VA facility and shot and killed herself?

There are plenty more examples of the mistreatment and overall disgraceful conduct of a VA staffed with more haters, degenerates and quacks than there were Indians on the Little Big Horn mid-June 1876.

The VA is a dysfunctional organization. In one recent year, while backlogs were rapidly increasing, VA gifted its employees with more than $140 million in pay bonuses.

Beyond benefits and compensation, medical treatment at VA is a gamble. It shouldn't be. Ask the family of the Navy veteran from West Virginia who, when treated not long ago at Pittsburgh VA, died for being given the wrong blood type. They even have doctors performing surgeries who aren't qualified to do so.

Many among the homeless - veterans or not - are proven to have mental disorders. What would you do with the old man in the movie Arsenic and Old Lace who believed he was Teddy Roosevelt? I hope you would try to get him treatment. The bottom line is that military veterans are living in the streets; and so-called refugees and illegal immigrants are treated better. That's reprehensible.

Sources
VA Appeals: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-veterans-appeals-backlog-20151123-story.html
Craig Sawyer: http://www.kgun9.com/news/investigations/tucson-va-navy-seal-denied-care-and-now-in-debt
Steve Lowery: http://www.veterans-for-change.org/news/3934-veterans-say-legitimate-claims-routinely-denied-or-ignored

Agree with most comments about the VA. I'm a serviced connected Veteran with disability and visit the West Palm Beach FL VA Medical Center frequently. I have noticed the huge increase in visiting dogs inside and outside the facility. I'm all for the therapy dogs and hope to have one some day, but it seems like there is lots of non-therapy/non-certified dogs going in and out of there. Could be getting treatment there, who knows!

I think you are completely right about the VA chief trying to out a faker. More power to him for trying.

Two months ago I saw a big black dude outside a 99 cent store with a special ops cap. He was a big fucker with biceps like footballs I stopped and asked him if he had been in the Army. Yes sir, he said---he had been in green beret, special ops. I asked him what his MOS was. He said he forgot!!!! He said he had brain damage!! I said bullshit. I talked to him awhile. He seemed like a decent guy--he got real uncomfortable when I said I thought he was full of shit and didnt believe him. I berated him for awhile and left. Never saw him there again. I also saw a guy begging once on the L.A. streets who was carrying a kitten. Poor kitty.

I spent a lot of time in L.A. EVERY single so-called homeless vet who asked me for money, I would question. NOT A SINGLE ONE ever convinced me he was really a vet. If Army they didnt know their MOS. If Navy they didnt know their rating. I never ever ran into one who convinced me he was really a vet.

Excellent point regarding the VA hiring more investigators.

If prostitution is the world's oldest profession, then begging must be a close second.

Tramps have been begging with dogs in Britain for as long as I remember. It has always been like that over here.

Cracks me up whenever I see a homeless person talking on a cell phone.

I always wondered how some people think the Elite Military personnel can suddenly forget how hard they worked to accomplish their status and all of the sudden become homeless.