Veterans Affairs to Ease Claim Process for Disability. The government is preparing to issue new rules that will make it substantially easier for veterans who have been found to have post-traumatic stress disorder to receive disability benefits for the illness, a change that could affect hundreds of thousands of veterans from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. The regulations from the Department of Veterans Affairs, sf which will take effect as early as Monday and cost as much as $5 billion over several years according to Congressional analysts, will essentially eliminate a requirement that veterans document specific events like bomb blasts, firefights or mortar attacks that might have caused P.T.S.D., an illness characterized by emotional numbness, irritability sf and flashbacks. For decades, veterans have complained that finding such records was extremely time consuming and sometimes impossible.