Reduce the Veterans Benefits Administration claims backlog
“There are currently over 400,000 claims pending within the Veterans Benefits Administration, and over 800,000 claims receipts are expected in 2008 alone. … Obama will hire additional claims workers and convene our nation’s leading veterans groups, employees and managers to develop an updated training and management model that will ensure that VA benefit decisions are rated fairly and consistently, and stem from adequate training and accountability for each claims adjudicator.”
The last time we looked at this promise, in November 2012, we rated it Promise Broken.
The government has had a long-standing problem with handling benefits claims from veterans. We looked at documented wait times for disability compensation, pensions and compensation for surviving spouses or children of veterans who die because of their military service. While these aren’t about waits to receive health care services, such claims are often health care-related.
We found a series of government oversight reports on the issue of wait times, which cited not only long lag times but also avoidable errors in rating claims. Officially, the backlog refers to benefit requests that go unaddressed by a government office within 125 days.
We found that the backlog nearly doubled from roughly 36 percent in summer 2010 to 65 percent in June 2012. So not only did President Barack Obama not reduce the backlog, it grew after he took office.
Still, we noted then that Veterans Affairs was hiring more staff to rate claims and had shortened the average time to process a claim. Overall, though, the backlog got worse because there were more veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan who were seeking benefits. For example, the number of claims jumped from 888,000 in 2008 to 1.4 million in 2011.
In 2014, journalists have uncovered stories about VA staff falsifying documentation about how long veterans are waiting for receiving health care in VA facilities. The story seems to be the same: a system overwhelmed by demand for services. Obama said Wednesday that he’s waiting for findings from official investigations so he can take action.
Because of the allegations of falsifying information, we have questions about whether official numbers are trustworthy. In April, the Obama administration released numbers suggesting the backlog was shrinking, but veterans groups said they had serious concerns that the numbers weren’t accurate.
We’ll be looking at this promise again in the coming months. For now, it remains Promise Broken.
About the Author
