DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A retired Marine veteran who was mistakenly declared dead by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs says he is still fighting with the VA more than a year later to get his full disability benefits.
Morris Scott says the mix-up happened last February when a note addressed to his wife, who actually was dead, mistakenly listed him as the deceased.
“I’m upset but more hurt than anything else. I take the check and letter to VA the next day. We are going to get this straightened out,” Scott told Channel 2’s Rachel Stockman.
Scott says the VA did eventually acknowledge its mistake but he is fighting to get his 100 percent disability benefit he believes he is owed because of his coronary artery disease.
“I got tough skin. The Marine Corps taught me how to be tough and I’m a fighter and I fight back,” Scott said.
In September, Channel 2 Action News covered another case where an 82-year-old Korean War veteran was also mistakenly declared dead by the VA.
“The VA works diligently to deliver timely and accurate benefits to veterans and their families. However, a small number of human coding errors do occur in the millions of transactions successfully completed each year. Additionally, we’ve improved verification of the veteran’s identity when processing 'notice of death' transactions. We regret the inconvenience to veterans and reassure them we work quickly to restore their benefits as soon as we are alerted to an issue,” said Chris DiBello, a spokesman with the Atlanta VA Regional Office.
“I recognize the workload. They have (a) difficult workload, but at the same time (they are the) second largest cabinet in the U.S.,” said Drew Early, a veterans’ attorney.
In March, congressional testimony from a senior advisor to the deputy commissioner for the Social Security Administration indicated 9,000 Americans are wrongly listed as dead on the Social Security death master file each year. It is not clear how many of those are veterans.
While the VA now considers Scott alive, he says his fight is far from over.
WSBTV
