Everyone knows about the extreme backlog faced by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Regional Offices. As I blogged recently, VA statistics show that as of July 2012, nearly 900,000 cases are pending before the VA. While this number is staggering, the backlog could get even worse given the number of troops projected to leave active duty by 2017.
According to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, as many as one million troops will leave the military by 2017. Currently, with the number of cuts of active-duty troops, over 100,000 veterans are created each year. When these troops withdraw from active service, these veterans seek their entitlements: to medical care, to education under the GI Bill, and, of course, disability compensation for those who became disabled as a result of an in-service injury.
The effect of this is an even greater strain on a system that does not have the design to handle so many disability compensation claims. The VA must create a more efficient system for processing. After all, these are “entitlements” – veterans have a legal right to compensation based on their service to our country. Sometimes claims take so long to process that in the interim, veterans find themselves with foreclosed homes, filing for bankruptcy, or simply (and most commonly) struggling valiantly to make ends meet.
The VA recently announced a new plan to divide claims into “lanes” depending on the level of complication of the claim and veteran need. The VA did not describe any other steps to be taken once these claims are added to the designated lane. Nor did it state how including a claim in the incorrect lane would be corrected; how the claims will be processed any differently after being placed in a lane; or the type of training VA claims adjustors will receive in processing claims in this manner.
I suggest that while the idea of categorizing claims is a good one, the categorization should be different. Claims should be categorized based on the type of disability claimed, the type of claim (new, reopened, or appeal), or other relevant factors. Claims adjustors should be assigned to the category of claims for which they have received specific training. For example, claims adjustors who assess claims for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) should receive special training to assess those claims. This would greatly reduce the number of pending claims, because one of the biggest reasons claims stay pending for years is due to VA error.
As always, however, we must acknowledge the sad truth that this is not a system that can support our troops (despite the popularity of that slogan). According to the National Veterans Center for Statistics and Analysis, as of September 2010 there are 22.7 million veterans living in our nation. If every single veteran applied for the disability compensation for which they were entitled, and received it, our nation would take on an enormous burden. But I must ask – by living in a free country, even in light of the still-poor economy, didn’t we all agree to bear this burden?
