Michael Rieker typically received his disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs at the first of every month.
When the money didn’t show up in his bank account one morning earlier this year, the Vietnam veteran called the VA to ask why and got some unexpected news: he was dead.
“I know that the VA doesn’t exactly move at the speed of light, so I decided to give them a call and find out what might have happened,” Rieker told the Washington Examiner. “At that point, I was told that my benefits were suspended because I was deceased.”
But Rieker, like a number of other Florida veterans who have encountered the same problem over the past 18 months, was clearly not deceased, a fact he attempted to explain to the VA employee on the other end of the phone before bringing the issue to his congressman.
A half-dozen veterans in the Tampa Bay area have seen their benefits suddenly disappear after the VA declared them dead while they were still very much alive.
The mistake appears to have occurred, at least in some instances, when veterans or their family members share similar names with people who have actually died.
In Rieker’s case, his benefits were suspended five months after a veteran with the same name, but a different middle initial, died in Phoenix. When VA officials finally got around to stopping that veteran’s disability checks, they accidentally listed the Michael Rieker of Dunedin, Fla.
“It’s just pretty unacceptable that somebody can just click a mouse and make you disappear,” Rieker said.
The Navy veteran, who began his military career at Pearl Harbor before serving two tours in De Nang, said he was lucky he was not totally dependent on the VA benefits when the agency cut them off.
Other veterans might have been “devastated” by such a loss, he noted.
Rep. David Jolly, R-Fla., sent a letter to VA Secretary Robert McDonald Wednesday demanding to know how many similar cases had occurred around the country given the six that he was aware of near his own district alone.
“[I]f this is caused by human error, there is clearly an inadequate system of checks and balances in place,” Jolly wrote. “If not human error, the current system is flawed.”
Mary Ann Clough of Clearwater, Fla. faced the same issue late last year when the VA notified her estate that she had died and halted her spousal benefits.
The more than $1,200 she received every month from the VA came as a result of her first husband’s military service, since they had been married for 26 years.
But it was her husband’s new wife, also named Mary, that had died, not Clough.
“If they had just looked at our Social Security numbers, they could have told that that wasn’t me that died,” Clough told the Examiner. “But then they go ahead and just stop all my payments.”
Clough had high praise for Jolly, whose office contacted the VA and clarified the mix-up.
“Mr. Jolly just straightened everything out. I just admire him,” Clough said. “When I wrote him just a little old letter, I didn’t think he’d even read it. And he did.”
However, Clough said the VA was difficult to navigate when she had attempted to restore her benefits on her own.
“They’re just so hard to work with now. They used to be a nice organization, helpful,” the 86-year-old woman said. “Now, you call them and they don’t even want to talk to you. It’s just really sad.”
In response to one of several inquiries Jolly has made about the VA’s mistaken death notices, an agency official blamed the Social Security Administration for providing faulty data.
“Because VA’s computer systems do not track the source of information, the Veterans Benefits Administration is unable to provide data regarding the frequency with which SSA information causes incorrect termination of VA benefits,” wrote Allison Hickey, the agency’s former top benefits official, in an April letter to Jolly.
Hickey has since resigned over an unrelated controversy involving VA officials that gamed an agency program in order to give themselves generous raises.
The VA did not immediately return a request for comment.
Veterans who have had their payments severed due to being listed as deceased can face a difficult road to reclaiming their benefits.
A pair of letters obtained by the Examiner indicate one veteran had to travel to the St. Petersburg, Fla. regional office to plead his case after a mistake at the Philadelphia VA facility resulted in his wife receiving a notice that the government planned to cut off her supposedly dead husband’s benefits.
“Vet came in person to Room 222 today to verify that he is not deceased, and would like to have his benefits reinstated as soon as possible,” said a handwritten note on the VA’s subsequent apology letter.
The VA fell under heightened scrutiny late last month after Hillary Clinton claimed its problems are “not as widespread” as Republicans have made them out to be.
However, this year alone the agency has weathered controversies ranging from a plan to ration expensive drugs to a backlog so enormous that one-third of all veterans waiting for their benefits died before hearing back about their applications.
The VA became the subject of national outrage last year after the agency’s inspector general confirmed VA hospitals had covered up long delays in care by creating fake patient waiting lists.
Despite the problems he has both witnessed and experienced, Rieker said he still believes the VA is a well-meaning organization.
“I’ve had nothing but good things to say about the VA, and I still do,” he said. “I think part of the problem with the VA is that they’re just so over-burdened.”
“Maybe not, maybe it’s just run by total nincompoops,” he added. “But I doubt that.”
UPDATE: A VA spokesman provided this statement Thursday morning:
“We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused by such errors and work to restore benefits as quickly as possible after any such error is brought to our attention. VA receives information from multiple sources. Although we believe the erroneous notifications represent a very small number of beneficiaries in comparison to the millions of transactions completed each year in our administration of benefits, to reduce the chance of inaccurate input, procedures are being amended to strengthen verification of the identity of the Veteran or family member when processing “notice of death” transactions.”
