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Vets’ disability claims keep piling up

Two pieces of good news for veterans — a possible $6.5 billion increase in the 2008 Veterans Affairs Department budget and passage of six bills to improve veterans programs — were overshadowed May 23 by a discussion that showed there is no quick or easy solution to the huge backlog of veterans’ disability benefits claims.

Retired Navy Vice Adm. Daniel Cooper, VA’s undersecretary for benefits, who has spent five years wrestling with claims processing, said headway is proving difficult because new claims are being filed faster than old claims can be handled. In fiscal 2006, the VA received 806,382 claims, and expects 811,000 this fiscal year, he said.

Claims also are becoming more complicated, he said. More than 25 percent include eight or more disabling conditions, each of which must be weighed. And more cases involve chronic progressive disabilities, such as cardiovascular problems and diabetes, which will worsen and likely result in additional claims, if only to increase a disability rating.

The $6.5 billion increase in VA funding approved by a House Appropriations subcommittee will help modestly by allowing the VA to hire 1,500 more claims staff. But Cooper cautioned that “increased staffing levels do not produce immediate production improvements,” and in fact could slow things down as experienced staffers are diverted to help new employees learn procedures. It could be a year or more before improvements are seen, he said.

“We are at a crisis stage and it will certainly get worse,” said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman who hosted the discussion that involved veterans’ groups, VA workers who process claims, legal experts and academics who have looked at the VA’s problems.

“This is very frustrating,” Filner said, “Some people have died before their claims are adjudicated. Some have lost their homes to foreclosure.”

The VA has about 800,000 claims pending, about 400,000 involving disability claims. The rest are changes in status or requests for education benefits that are not generally considered a problem.

Cooper said 300,000 disability claims pending at any one time would be normal, considering the volume of claims and the goal of processing them in about 120 to 145 days, which by his count puts the VA behind by about 100,000 claims.

That number could grow as Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans file new claims. Although about 1,800 World War II veterans pass away each day, the number of veterans getting disability benefits is rising because current operations are creating more veterans, and new laws have expanded benefits eligibility and encouraged more people to apply for assistance.

Hiring more claims workers is a conventional step to tackling a backlog, but there is a bipartisan mood on the committee to do more. “I believe we have to take some bolder action,” Filner said.

Artificial intelligence

Republican committee members are pushing to look into new technology, including artificial intelligence, to help review claims by looking for answers to key questions that determine eligibility and ratings levels.

Cooper, a former submariner, said he is all for using artificial intelligence if and when it can help, but in the meantime he is focusing on smaller goals, like trying to solve problems in getting service records for National Guard and reserve members, finding records for troops who have been treated in multiple facilities, and dealing with difficulties in verifying factors that could cause post-traumatic stress disorder.

Interim steps include spending more money on staff overtime, bringing back retired claims processors to help and contacting veterans by phone rather than mail when there are simple questions about claims, he said.

Filner wasn’t satisfied. “I am looking for a list of five or six things we can do right now that are going to have an immediate impact,” he said. “We have to do better.”

One simple idea was offered by Marilyn Park of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, who said claims might move faster through the system if one person handled a claim from start to finish, through all appeals. This would avoid a situation in which a new representative has to relearn a claim several times during the process, she said.

One of the six bills passed by the House could make the claims backlog even larger by expanding outreach efforts to tell veterans about available benefits.

Supporters said this could help older veterans, especially widows, learn about, and get help filing for, pensions aimed at low-income veterans and their survivors.

Also on the list of veterans bills are proposals to expand chiropractic care; provide more support for veterans with traumatic brain injuries, including plans for long-term care; extend veterans vocational assistance to some severely wounded service members still on active duty; and extend to five years the period in which combat veterans can get post-service health care without having to prove that their health problems are service-connected. The current time limit is two years.

None of the bills will become law until passed by the Senate, where the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee is still wading through a pile of proposals.

Related reading:

GAO report sums up disability system woes