Overhaul of VA system studied
By Dennis Camire
Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON — A growing backlog of veterans' disability claims, including from soldiers who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and past wars, is helping fuel calls for an overhaul of the Department of Veterans Affairs system.
The VA's plan is to hire more workers — more than 450 new claims specialists next year, a number Congress wants to increase by another 1,000. But even the VA says the new hires would not be fully productive for two to three years.
The VA has more than 647,000 pending claims for disability compensation and pension benefits. Almost 170,000 of them have been pending six months or more. The numbers have been climbing in recent years, increasing by more than 69,000 since last year alone, partly because of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Larry Galola of Honolulu, a retired VA employee who worked in the claims division for 25 years, said one problem slowing down the claims process is that veterans include a number of disabilities in a claim and the VA will not rule on the case until each one is addressed.
To speed up the process, Galola said veterans might consider prioritizing the issues that are the major concern to them and have the VA decide those as soon as possible.
"Put the others, which could take a lot more time, on a backburner," he said. "If the whole issue is trying to get resources out to the veterans, get the easy ones out as fast as possible."
Agency officials predict the annual number and complexity of the cases will only increase over the next five years.
"It's as if us veterans are having to fight the school-ground bullies for our milk money," said Keith Brouse of Bentonville, Ark., an Air Force and Army veteran who has been struggling more than three years with the VA for a disability rating based on his post-traumatic stress disorder and other problems.
Linda J. Bilmes, a professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, said she believes finding answers to the claims problem requires "outside-the-box thinking."
Her recommendations, recently detailed to a congressional committee, include:
"This is essentially the same system that is used elsewhere in government, for example, the Internal Revenue Service for taxes and the Securities and Exchange Commission for filings," Bilmes recently told the House Veterans Affairs disability assistance subcommittee.
The proposal interested the subcommittee chairman, Rep. John Hall, D-N.Y: "The idea of giving veterans the benefit of the doubt sounds good to me."
Daniel Bertoni, an administrator for workforce and other issues at the Government Accountability Office, said the VA's disability compensation system needed to be revamped since the national economy has moved away from manufacturing jobs to service and knowledge-based employment. The VA's disability programs focus on concepts from the past, particularly in equating a disability with an inability to work, he said.
Bertoni also said a congressionally chartered commission is studying the VA disability system and is scheduled to issue its report by Oct. 1.
"Advances in medicine and technology have reduced the severity of some medical conditions and have allowed individuals to live with greater independence and function in work settings," he said.
Bertoni also said consolidating claims processing from the VA's 57 regional offices into fewer ones would increase efficiency and save overhead costs.
Reach Dennis Camire at dcamire@gns.gannett.com.
