Marine Corps veteran Jeremy Williams was humiliated last summer when his front six teeth fell out of his mouth in the middle of a business meeting.

Almost a year later, he’s infuriated that he still can’t get his Veterans Affairs health insurance to correct the problem.

“It sucks,” the 42-year-old said. “I don’t smile as much anymore, because I’ve got no teeth to show. I don’t know what it’s like to bite into a steak or a burger without having to cut it into little pieces. Right now, I have to cut my food up like I did for my kids when they were three and four.”

Williams’ dental problems stem from an injury he suffered in 2006 during a roadside bomb attack in Ramadi, Iraq. The blast threw him face-first into his weapon mount, cracking the upper bones in his mouth.

But despite what would seem to be an obvious service-connected injury, Williams has spent most of the last 22 years adrift in the VA health care system , forking over tens of thousands of his own money to cover an array of dental problems stemming from the injury. And for the last 10 months, he’s been trying to figure out how to get the VA to pay for surgery to put his front teeth back into his mouth.

“It’s so frustrating because if I was missing a limb from war, I know I’d be able to get a prosthetic right away,” he said. “VA is good at that. But dental stuff doesn’t work that way.”

Advocates say those shortcomings in VA dental coverage are a common complaint among veterans, both those with minor and serious injuries.

“This is not really an issue of … denied claims, because for the most part, dental care is just not really available to veterans,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ National Legislative Service. “But if they could get it and use it, it would save money in veterans’ care down the line.”

VA leaders say they are working to improve the system and have added hundreds more dental workers in the last year. But officials […]

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