Congress Will Talk About Appeals Backlog, Hopefully This Will Light A Fire...

[marine0816]

Hopefully this wasn't already posted, I'll be tuning in.

Sep 05, 2014 | by Bryant Jordan www.military.com

Congress will meet with Veterans Affairs Department officials next week to demand answers on how the agency is handling appeals filed by veterans whose compensation claims were denied.

The focus on the Board of Veterans Appeals comes as the VA works at restoring trust to a department seriously shaken by confirmed reports of secret wait lists, systemic manipulation of patient data and instances of veterans dying before getting to see a doctor.

Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colorado, told Military.com on Friday that the VA's problems go beyond the Veterans Health Administration.

"It is imperative that Americans understand that the culture of corruption within the VA expands far beyond patient wait times and I have serious concerns about the mismanagement in the Board of Veterans Appeals process," he said.

Coffman said the VA needs to "ensure a veteran's appeal claim is processed expeditiously and accurately so they receive the care they need and deserve."

Much of the attention on a disability claims backlog over the past four years has been on first-time applications, which exploded in part because hundreds of thousands of Vietnam veterans who were able to file for a number of illnesses finally recognized as linked to their service.

Additionally, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, when they did file a claim, generally filed for multiple conditions, VA officials have said.

Former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki determined early on in his tenure that a claim not acted on within 125 days of being submitted was part of a backlog. As recently as a year ago, the backlog was more than 600,000 claims. The backlog has since dropped to below 300,000 and is on schedule to be eliminated next year.

But appealed claims those submitted if the initial one was denied or if the veteran sought an increased rating or additional benefit also grew.

There are now more than 250,000 of those claims before the Board of Appeals. These may take an average of four years to decide, said Glenn Bergmann, a former VA lawyer who now represents veterans seeking compensation from the department.

Some veterans as well as lawmakers have accused the VA of reducing its backlog of initial claims by denying them, getting them off the backlog but forcing the veteran to file an appeal. Some veterans have also slammed the VA's slow processing of and denial of claims as intended to wait for the veteran to die.

Coffman said the Sept. 10 hearing will address those wait time concerns for veterans with a claims appeal.

"The purpose of this hearing is to address problems occurring at VA's Board of Veterans' Appeals ... related to various forms of data manipulation," he said. "It will address the excessive delays in processing claims and the various methods used to shift cases around in order to hide the amount of time cases are sitting without being processed or [adjudicated]."

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/09/05/congress-to-press-va-on-claims-appeals-process.html

[Notorious Kelly]

Jerrel has a link in Shoutbox but the repost police aren't too bad here and it's good to see the story in a post.

Thanks for the news!

[add55p]

I saw the recent congressional BVA hearings and the BVA representative that answered the committee members questions, was well prepared, responded eloquently, and was not the least phased. She had a reasonable answer for everything that the committee asked her, to include making nonsense of the whistleblower on the panel who had some serious serious allegations against the BVA; The BVA Representative on the panel stated that the whistleblower's allegations were from complaints noted as early as 2012 and were simply baseless.

Do not look for any changes at BVA regarding faster processing of claims no time soon..

Remember, there have been several committee hearing on VA Claims Backlogs as early as 2002, which leads me to believe that these hearing are just formalities, and that the VA will handle your case as usual.

125 days processing time before or during 2015????!!! Check your estimated time when you file a new claim to get the real estimated completion date. the 125 days is just another promise to Congress. If they do not keep the promise as in the past, so what, there will just be more hearings in the future..

Take care and just be patient and wait.. Do not believe the hype!!!

Add

[Pete53]

Congress is part of the problem.

[Notorious Kelly]

Yup- dog & pony show.

[jbasser]

Folks, I thought the same thing, Dog and Pony show. That was until I got involved on our states Veterans Coalition. Congress has very good intentions and are hard nosed and determined to get the VA to get it right. Now, as we knows, the Upper echeclon of the VA, Not including the secretary, is a well rounded group of people that are in the so called click. These people are so enept in the practice of delaying Veterans that they have graduated to delaying Congress. These folks are intelligent as they know that the Congress is working on Borowed time. They can delay an issue on a continuous basis because they know every 2 years Congress has to start over. At that point, By the time the issue gets back to Congress, It is way too late.

[Jerrel]

You are so right John time is not on the side of the Veteran and the VA knows it we must find a way around this

road block so the issues move directly into the new Congress with out any delay.