Veterans face another backlog as a quarter-million appeal disability claims
As the Obama administration touts its recent progress in reducing the enormous backlog of veterans’ disability claims, a second backlog is rarely mentioned.
More than a quarter-million veterans are appealing disability-claim decisions they say are wrong, and in some cases they can wait four years or more for a ruling, figures from the Department of Veterans Affairs show.
The 256,061 veterans appealing decisions represent an approximately 50 percent increase since President Obama took office. And more are coming. The Board of Veterans’ Appeals, which makes the final administrative decisions on appeals, expects its number of pending cases to double over the next four years.
“I’m not looking for any special treatment here,” said Matthew Goldberg, 47, a retired Army Special Forces soldier who served three tours in Iraq and earned three Bronze Star Medals. Since 2008, he has been appealing a VA decision that granted him limited disability compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder and a back injury.
“I just want to be treated with dignity and respect, and a lot of the time I didn’t get that from VA,” said Goldberg, who has sought higher compensation.
The appeals backlog has grown partly because VA has directed resources away from appeals and toward the high-profile disability backlog, according to interviews with VA workers and veterans’ advocates.
“VA is robbing Peter to pay Paul,” said Glenn Bergmann, a former appellate litigator in VA’s Office of the General Counsel who now frequently represents veterans on disability-claim appeals.
VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki acknowledged in an interview last week that appeals do not get the same emphasis as new claims but said that will change as the backlog shrinks. “Yes, there is a need to focus on appeals,” Shinseki said. “This is an elephant. You have to take bites one at a time.”
In recent months, amid criticism from Congress and the media, the department took dramatic steps to attack the claims backlog. It mandated overtime for new claims and directed that disability cases older than one year be moved to the front of the line.
Gerald Manar, deputy national veterans service director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said VA officials at regional offices often make a “calculated decision” to pull workers off appeals and redirect them to new claims.
“Over the last three years or so, every time VA has made a push, they pull almost all of the employees out of appeals and into front-end work,” said Manar, a former VA benefits manager.
Beth McCoy, assistant deputy undersecretary for the Veterans Benefits Administration, said VA headquarters has directed regional offices not to take workers off appeals. “It’s tempting to take those appeals resources,” she said. “But that wasn’t our intent, and we continue to reinforce that.”
A veteran who takes an appeal through all available administrative steps faces an average wait of 1,598 days, according to VA figures for 2012. If the veteran pursues the case outside VA to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, it takes an additional 321 days on average, according to court documents
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