May 8, 2007

Lawyers Scamming On PTSD?

From StrategyPage.com:
As feared, lawyers are increasingly soliciting troops coming back from duty overseas, and urging them to claim they have Combat fatigue (or PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder) and apply for disability benefits. This recently became big news in Australia, but the involvement of crooked lawyers in disability scams has been big business in the United States for decades. ...

The problem with the lawyers assisting troops in scamming the government for benefits payments is nothing new. It has been going on for years in the civilian disability insurance and social security disability systems. Lawyers involved in class action suits, for large numbers of victims have been caught doing coaching, and records falsification, on a large scale.
I have no idea what this person is talking about. There have been issues with plaintiff lawyer behavior in asbestosis class action law suits, but lawyers have hardly been involved in Veterans benefits cases. The only scandals concerning "civilian disability insurance", by which the author must mean long term disability benefits under pension plans, have been scandals concerning the conduct of insurance companies. As for attorneys representing Social Security claimants, there are far too many real disability cases out there to think about concocting something. As a practical matter, to win on a PTSD disability claim with Social Security, the claimant needs to be under regular psychiatric treatment. Who is going to see a psychiatrist on a regular basis with a feigned mental condition? It is hard enough to get people who suffer from unquestioned mental illness to see a psychiatrist on a regular basis!

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