For more than two years, former Marine gunnery sergeant Matt Hannan has waited for a ruling on whether he is entitled to disability payments for PTSD.
The 35-year-old New Kensington resident said he filed the claim with the Veterans Benefits Administration before he was medically discharged in 2010, following 15 years of service and two tours of duty in Iraq. “Everytime I try to get an answer, I get no answer,” he said.
Hannan is one of nearly 825,000 veterans nationwide stymied by a bureaucratic backlog that has delayed payments for war-related disabilities, according to a national analysis by the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Pittsburgh is one of the slowest regional offices in the country, ranking 44th out of 58 in early September, according to further analysis by PublicSource. More than 11,000 claims were pending and the average wait time was nearly 10 months. Nationally, the wait time is more than eight months, and appeals can add years to the delays.
