WASHINGTON — The surgeon general of the Army said he believes wounded soldiers at Fort Drum and other installations can continue receiving advice from veterans' counselors as they apply for disability ratings — up to a point.
A recent agreement between the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs prevents the VA only from helping fill out Army paperwork for soldiers, not from advising them on the process of disability claims, Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army's top medical official, told a House subcommittee Friday.
That agreement, signed earlier this week, spells out the two departments' responsibilities in dealing with soldiers, in the wake of complaints that the Army discouraged the VA from providing assistance at Fort Drum. But the wording has caused some confusion, especially with news organizations, said Rep. John M. McHugh, R-Pierrepont Manor, the panel's ranking Republican.
Gen. Schoomaker, in response to Mr. McHugh's questions, said he agrees with the congressman's view that VA representatives are prevented only from helping in the actual filling out of Army forms — not from offering soldiers general advice.
"My understanding is exactly yours," Gen. Schoomaker said at the hearing of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel.
Gen. Schoomaker said he understands the agreement to play to the VA's strengths, in concentrating that agency's efforts on the Veterans Affairs disability rating system.
At issue is one sentence in the memorandum between Army Secretary Pete Geren and the secretary of Veterans Affairs: "VA service representatives will assist and advise service members, but will not prepare documentation for other than VA benefit claims."
Mr. McHugh said he reads that sentence to mean that the VA's authority to help soldiers stops when pencil is put to paper on Army disability-related paperwork.
In testimony to the panel, Gen. Schoomaker repeated his previous assertion that the root of the problem at Fort Drum was miscommunication between the Army and the VA, and that the agreement was needed to make the responsibilities clear.
But the broader troubles in the disability rating system, publicized by the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, so offended service members and their families that Gen. Schoomaker said he felt like "the enemy" when meeting with Army families.
The Army and the VA have separate systems for rating soldiers' war-related disabilities, with the VA tending to approve considerably higher ratings. But they have different basic aims: the Army's system, for instance, determines whether soldiers can return to active duty or must be discharged, and the VA system determines the level of benefits for which a wounded soldier will be eligible.
"You've got two good systems manned by good folks," Mr. McHugh said. But put together, he said, they created frustration.
In this year's annual defense programs bill, Congress encouraged the Army to create a pilot program combining aspects of the rating systems. That program started in November, before the bill became law, Gen. Schoomaker said, and 100 service members are in it.
But he also urged lawmakers to adopt more of the recommendations in the report prepared by a commission headed by former Sen. Robert J. Dole, R-Kan., and former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, which would address more of the conflicts between the two systems.
