C-123 Claims Update After Denver VARO Visit

I had the opportunity to visit the Denver VARO and was kindly received by a claims officer and her supervisor who offered me an extraordinary amount of time reviewing my claims, denials and appeals. The questions I raised were about any administrative changes or developments regarding our Agent Orange claims.

First off, they had no information about C-123 issues other than the March 11 changes on VA web pages. They checked: Claims and appeals are still handled in the local VARO (at least, mine is and they had nothing about St. Paul being a centralised processing facility.

Checking carefully, they told me my last claim was "postponed" to await the C-123 IOM decision. I JSRRC had already provided one in March 2013 and another in March 2014, but she explained a new one would be required.
mentioned that report had been published in January but they had no information about it. I was told the next step would likely be, once VA (Washington) sent Denver information about the IOM report, the regional office would have to inquire through DOD to make sure I flew the C-123s. At that point Denver would request a Joint Services Records Research Center report. I mentioned

One suggestion was to submit my doctor's letter that I'm terminal as that is a faster category for processing claims and appeals. Another, of course, was to be patient. Everyone realizes that appeals take a long time. The lady helping me had been working on appeals from 2010-11, so I have several years to go because my claim wasn't denied until 2012.

SITREP: We're going nowhere fast.