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Veterans Affairs wants to be an advocate, not an enemy
..."You fight for your country, then come home and have to fight against your own country for the benefits you were promised," said Hunt, 28, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine Corps sniper.

It took Hunt, who lives in Brentwood, 10 months to receive VA disability payments for his injuries after the agency misplaced his paperwork.

The VA, which still relies on a mostly paper-based system for disability claims, is overwhelmed by a flood of wounded veterans from the long Afghan and Iraq wars. That's in addition to the Vietnam War, Korean War and even World War II veterans.

Some veterans wait up to six months to get their initial VA medical appointment. The typical veteran of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars waits 110 days for a disability claim to be processed, with a few waiting up to a year. For all veterans, the average wait is 161 days.

The VA says a ruling on an appeal of a disability rating takes more than 600 days on average. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, or IAVA, an advocacy group, says the average delay is 776 days.

Up to 17% of veterans' disability ratings are incorrect, the VA says. Thousands of dollars in disability payments hinge on the ratings, which are determined by the VA. The agency says it hopes to eventually cut the error rate to 2%.

With the VA deluged with 90,000 new claims a month, the backlog has reached 175,000. The VA defines a backlogged case as one that takes more than 125 days to process....