“In my judgment, it cannot be fixed,” said Peter Levin. “We need to build a new system, and that is exactly what we are going to do.”
Levin’s comments came at a meeting organized by the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee to toss around ideas for repairing a system that has a backlog of about 1.1 million claims awaiting decisions and an error rate on claims of 17 to 25 percent, depending on who is counting.
Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., the veterans’ committee chairman, described the system as an “insult to veterans” who, on average, wait six months for an initial decision on benefits and who can wait for years if the decision is appealed.
“It looks like we are going backwards rather than forward,” Filner said. “No matter how much we raise the budget, no matter how many people we hire, the backlog seems to get bigger.”
“People die before their claim is adjudicated. They lose their home. They lost their car,” Filner said.
Overhauling the disability claims process is the top priority of veterans’ service organization and a top priority for the Obama administration, but there is no agreement on exactly what to do.
The short-term solution proposed by the Obama administration is what VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has called the “brute force” option of hiring more people to process claims. Because the total number of claims received by VA is increasing and because it takes two years or longer to fully train new workers, hiring more people is not expected to improve things for three to five years, said Dan Bertoni, director of disability issues for the Government Accountability Office.
VA is experimenting with new ways of processing claims by reducing steps and by having fully electronic records, but the system is so complex that an easy fix is elusive, which is why Levin talked about starting over. A more simplified system could work, experts say, in which certain ailments are assumed to be the result of military service and extensive medical screenings are not necessary. So could a disability rating system that has four or five different levels of pay, rather than 10.
For their part, veterans advocates are not yet ready to blow up the system and start over. In a joint letter, dated March 17, to veterans’ committee members, major veterans’ organizations say they are unaware of any “magic bullet” solution or alternative system to the current problems, but support changes in the current system. They are pushing the idea of providing quick disability benefits — in 60 days or less — to veterans who have disabilities that can be “easily or quickly resolved,” which would include disabilities scientifically linked to military service, orthopedic conditions and hearing loss.
