Fee Base Claims Lost

[john999]

I made two claims for reimbursement in November 2014 and in February 2015 using the Claim for Unauthorized Expense form. I did this before when the VA owed me money for dental care they should have provided. It was the same situation this time. I have called numerous times to Fee Base, Congressman, and to the patient advocate to no avail. Finally, today the Fee Base office in Tampa responded to tell me they had no record of my claims. This really burned my azz since they had already acknowledged that they were processing the claims back in March of 2015. Now they can't find them. Thankfully, I have copies of the claims and the evidence I used. It has taken the Fee Base Office 9 months to tell me they lost my claims. Last time I made a claim like this the Fee Base Office just threw them away and admitted it to me when I complained about them taking 6 months to process my claim for reimbursement. I got paid on that one. I will probably have to gather more evidence on the recent reimbursement claims because they will probably lose the evidence, or not connect it to the right claim. They did not have my correct address at the fee base office even though I have been at the same address for 28 years.

How come my credit card company never loses statements? When and if I owe the VA they never lose these records. IRS never loses records of debts. Nobody I owe money to ever loses the records of my debts. The VA loses everything. If you carry it, and put it right into their hands they lose it. This means I must always keep copies of everything I send them and expect them to lose it. I made a complaint to the IG. The only way to get things done right is to devote yourself to seeing a claim is done, and be willing to submit, and resubmit evidence and claim forms over and over again.

I have to pay estimated tax to the IRS every quarter. They never lose my checks. They cash them within days of my sending them. Does he VA log in official claims at the Fee Base Office? Do they log in claims at the VARO? Is this incompetence or just a sinister way of cheating vets by delaying payment. The VA acts like a low life insurance company that wants to delay paying claims as long as possible until you hire a lawyer. I think the VA has lost every claim I ever sent them at least once. Vets and spouses who don't have that much experience with the VA system probably give up on trying to get their claims ever done right. When they screw up every single claim you send to them you have to wonder about a system that is supposed to be helping disabled veterans many of whom are elderly and without resources to fight for years. Enough is enough! What does it take to get the US government to treat us vets like human beings?

John

[USMC_VET]

I think this is just a government thing, and to an extent humanity thing.

Wiht private business, they will stall on payments if they owe you or credit you SOMETIMES, but in the end they pay you and thats a weeks maybe months long issue, worst case in my experience. most just say "yep we owe you, sorry for the wait a check will be mailed to ______ is that your address?"

I also noticed with payment issues that when the VA owes me money, or forgot to pay my tuition for GI BILL its weeks to get ahold of them and then months and months and months to finally get it, in the case of mistaken retro payments and the appeals that go with it, its sometimes years. and that is not in some of the cases, its in all of the cases, i have never once said to the VA hey you owe me money, i have these records, etc etc. show them definitively they do owe me and them say "oh i apologize you are right you will receive a check in the mail (or ebt) within the next five business days" at best its "i will pass this along to ____ in our ____department" and there it goes to die, and even when they do acknowledge, begrudingly, that you are right, then it still takes a long time for them to actually do it.

HOWEVER

when i was overpayed for the GI BILL they notified me right away, called me, mailed me letters and letters and letters, then finally threatened me with legal action. I was purposefully ignoring them, in the hopes maybe they would like how it felt to be ignored for months with no correspondence. What i should have done was mailed letters back to them 1 month after theirs were received stating that I was working very hard to figure out the issue, however due to a significant backlog of mor eimportant events in my life the average wait time was 244 days before i could adequately research and rate their claim.

From now on mail everything to them certified mail/return receipt so you have proof of what you sent and when you sent it.

I would email allison hickey about this. sounds like a good point to get her involved.

[Vync]

I am also still dealing with fee basis claims from almost nine months ago. About five of seven have been finalized and paid in full. I have to call both the VA and each biller about once a month to see how far they have nudged them along. So far, they have not outright lost any of my claims. I would not be surprised if it does end up happening.

[USMC_VET]

I think an incentive fee rate needs to be established to better motivate the VA to stop losing claims.

I think that if you send in a fee claim or a comp claim and they lose it they should be assessed a fee of $10 a day for every day that you lose in the process.

So say you send in a comp claim, do it right, certified mail/return receipt and ebenefits, all that good stuff and it gets "lost" and they "have no record of the claim on file" and you can prove you sent it and they received it then they are assessed the fee from the time it was received to the point where the VA acknowledges it is "not in the sytem" to a maximimum of 12 months where it tops out. So if they play the shell game of let us check here, we will call you back it could end up netting you over 3k, and with the amount this happens it would cost them dearly to continue.

one thing the VA understands is paying out money.

[stillhere]

John, call your local TV station and see if they will pick up on it?

Make a damn nice story for Veterans Day!!

Stillhere

[john999]

I did call "Channel 8 On Your Side" which is a local TV station about a situation with the VA. They called me back and said when it comes to the VA medical system they just stonewall them quoting privacy laws and all that bunk. I tried to get help with how the pain clinic and my PCP were taking me over the hurdles because of my sleep apnea and pain meds. Perhaps I will call Ms. Hickey. I bet my claims are at the Fee Base Office because they did call me back and said they found one of them. What is Ms. Hickey's email? You know today the VA supplied me with very expensive Provent SR Sleep Apnea Nasal Devices. There is just no rational explanation as to how they allocate resources.

My Fee Base claims have not been denied or accepted. That is another whole step if they are denied which I expect. They did not ever get that far in 10 months. They immediately lost my claims. I used an authorized VA form as well for my claim. There is a claim form called "Claim for Unauthorized Expense". I used it before and got some money. Let's say you get dental care while your TDIU claim is on appeal for five years. You can be reimbursed for that money spent on your teeth while you waited for the TDIU or 100%. That is what I did before. In this present case the VA just refused to do needed and customary dental care because they did not want to spend the money. They lied to me and told me I would never miss the teeth that I lost and that I did not need replacements in form of bridge or implant. This was malpractice and vindictive cheapness. If a dentist pulls a tooth and there is a tooth that opposes the pulled tooth then they should either do an implant or a bridge if possible. If not the unopposed tooth will start to grow longer and put your bite out of whack. A student dentist knows this.

John

John