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Filner: VA claims process needs radical changes

Improving the veterans’ claims process will require more than just hiring more staff, the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman said Friday.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., said in an interview that radical change is needed to eliminate the backlog of claims and make the whole process easier for veterans by automatically accepting claims for disabilities rated at 30 percent or less, with only spot-checking for accuracy.

Filner called this the “IRS model,” a reference to the Internal Revenue Service process of auditing a small percentage of federal income tax returns, not every one.

He said automatic claims approval, with some auditing, is a way of clear what he estimates are 100,000 claims from Vietnam veterans related to exposure to Agent Orange. And the practice also could put a big dent in the overall backlog of all claims pending before VA, which Filner estimates to be almost 1 million.

“When you are getting to a 1 million backlog, the insult is so great you really have to do something,” he said.

In many cases, he said, veterans “get more pain and suffering from the [claims] process than they ever did from their wounds.”

Reforming the claims process is on Filner’s list of top issues that must be addressed by Congress this year.

Other priorities, he said, include creating a process for advance funding of veterans’ health programs, starting a comprehensive program for homeless veterans, improving VA health care treatment for women, and expanding access to VA care for veterans in rural areas.