1.2 Million Veterans Waiting

[broncovet]

The VA claims backlog has now grown, not to a million Veterans, but much worse, 1.2 million Veterans are now waiting on the VA to process their benefits. Its the longest line in history..and growing daily. At this rate, there will be even more Veteran homelessness and Veteran suicide: Veterans are expected to be patient while our bill collectors are not.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?n...r=0&thold=0

Even worse, older claims, that is, Veterans already waiting sometimes for years, go directly to the "back burner".

Edited July 10, 2009 by broncovet

[Eric_M]

Unfortunately our political leaders probably won't take notice till it reachs the billion mark.

Oh well, the military taught me patience.....Eric

[halos2]

OMG! It was a million a month ago. It will be a couple of million by years end. Something is seriously wrong, SERIOUSLY WRONG!!

[broncovet]

This disturbing trend (steadily worsening Veterans claim backlog) has actually accelerated since Shinesiki has became Secretary, with no signs of relief in sight for Veterans.

As far as I can see, the Secretary's plan is to require the Vietnam Era Veterans to wait even longer, and give priority to the "new" Veterans at the expense of the older Veterans. This plan has backfired and needs to be scrapped, before all 26 million or so Veterans are all on the VA's already very, very long "waiting list for benefits".

We need to remember that these are not "claims", they are people...and these people need help now, not in 3-4 years when we see if the massive new IT funding will solve the problem.

During the next 3-4 years or so that it will take to implement the computer system to convert to electronic filing of benefits, from the present paper system, tens of thousands more Veterans will become homeless and thousands more will commit suicide.

It has been reported, already, that more Veterans are currently dieing to their own hand than to the enemy in war. WE should be heartbroken if just one Veteran takes his own life because the DVA insists on doing its claim processing in the tired old method of delay after delay which forces the Veteran into poverty and desperation.

[broncovet]

At least two plausable solutions have been proposed to end/reduce the backlog, but the VA will have no part of them, as it will upset the "business as usual" attitude:

1. Automatic approval of Veterans claims after a specified period of time, say 6-18 months. The VA objects to this plan on the grounds that some VEterans claims are complex and take longer than that, due to inability to locate records, etc. Instead, the VA has "automatic denial" of benefits. How it works is if the Veteran applies for multiple benefits, the VA can address just one issue and the rest are "secretly denied", "automatically denied", or "deemed denied", depending on which term you like to use. The end result is that the Veteran does not get a decision on all his claims, so they are denied, and the one year clock starts ticking that the Veteran is required to appeal the Secret Denial, even tho he never received a decision, or else the automatic denial becomes final, except in the case of CUE.

2. Immediate approval of claims, similar to the WAY the IRS pays tax refunds. With the IRS method, the taxpayer is assumed to be honest, and has used good faith in filing his/her tax return. If an audit shows the taxpayer committed fraud, he will have to pay everything back, with interest, and could be prosecuted for fraud. It would appear that someone who served his country well with an honorable discharge could/should be trusted just as well as a taxpayer who may not have served his country. Again the VA opposes this method and prefers the same broken system that has been used for years.

Altho both of the above methods would cost money in the short term, the long term benefits would likely be great and overshadow the short term burden to taxpayers. For example, Veterans waiting on benefits place an undue burden on already strained government programs to help the needy. Somebody has to pick up the pieces left behind and care for family members who have lost their Veteran due to suicide, or found themselves homeless with the Veteran. Some Veterans resort to drugs/alcohol as a sort of pain medication for their inability to provide for their family while awaiting benefits. Others, out of desperation, may have to resort to crime to support their family. Far too many give up and either become homeless or commit suicide. The cost of "status quo" for the VA is just too great to continue to do nothing about the VA backlog/claim delays.

[Testvet]

I asked the author of this article where the 1.2 million claims came from and he posted a bunch of links and none of them showed the numbers 1.2 million he posted links to articles saying the claims are approaching one million and another article where growth of claims is 13% annually etc but no facts to substantiate the numbers I did post this the weekly workload that shows 954,000 compensation claims at the VAROs and the BVA and also includes 12,000 pre-discharge claims of military still on active duty so according to the data most people use they haven't surpassed the million mark yet, close but no cigar.

http://www.vba.va.gov/reports/mmwr/

http://www.vba.va.gov/REPORTS/mmwr/070609.xls July 6, 2009

I prefer facts to headlines

Edited July 10, 2009 by Testvet

[broncovet]

Test

In typical VA style, the VA often understates its problems. This article pointed out that this number includes Veterans waiting on benefits at the BVA, CAVC or other appeals.

By not including appeals in the numbers, the VA can make the numbers seem less bad than what they really are. The appeals backlog is growing substantially as well, as some suggested, the VA is just denying claims willy nilly, to make the backlog seem better, then letting the appeals sort it out. It is an outrageous method to reduce the backlog.

My hats off to this author for including claims in appeal process, and not just VARO claims because the bottom line is the Veteran is waiting on his benefits regardless of whether his claim is at the RO, BVA, CAVC or Federal court. The Veteran is still waiting on the VA to process his claim.