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| Claims at VA Regional Claims Office |
One of the deepest questions philosophers have considered over the centuries is the sometimes conflict between the rights and needs of society, and the rights and needs of each individual member of that society.
The latest point in the debate over fixing the Veterans Affairs Department is a microcosm of that debate.
The claims backlog the Veterans Benefits Administration has been dealing with for years is finally below 100,000, according to numbers from late summer. The agency promoted the backlog reduction then as a sign that its management strategy was working, in contrast to scandals inside the agency’s other main branch, the Veterans Health Administration. The timing was unfortunate, though; whatever good publicity the VBA, and its then-leader Alison Hickey, might have gotten out of the news was obliterated by the scandal surrounding two employees who received enormous relocation benefits after engineering jobs for themselves outside Washington, displacing other VA officials who held those jobs.
Those numbers look different, though, in light of a Los Angeles Times article on the backlog. Given what the Times reports, it seems unlikely the agency will ever be able to make it go away. The biggest holdup to making the backlog disappear is the most politically unpalatable element of the claims process to do something about.
The biggest roadblock, the Times story makes it seem, is the veterans themselves.
The major reason the backlog doesn’t shrink any faster, the way the story tells it, is that vets submit appeals over and over again when they get outcomes they don’t agree with, hoping against hope for a different outcome. The article tells the story of one vet who did indeed get a different outcome after many tries. He’s still in the system, though – now trying to get retroactive benefits.
The reason he and the other vets do so? Because they can.
“Unlike U.S. civil courts, the appeals system has no mechanism to prevent endless challenges,” the Times’ Alan Zarembo writes. “Veterans can keep their claims alive either by appealing or by restarting the process from scratch by submitting new evidence: service records, medical reports or witness statements.”
The logistics of the backlog is complicated, and has lots of qualifications. The 100,000 number VA celebrated in August was for initial claims applications that were 125 days old. Since that number was well over half a million when the agency declared war on it two years ago, the progress looks real.
The news isn’t all good, though. The Times reports while the claims backlog has shrunk, the appeals backlog – vets who don’t like the response they get from VA and ask to have it reviewed – has climbed from 167,412 in September 2005 to 425,480 in October 2015.
“VA officials say there are two possible solutions to the bottleneck,” Zarembo writes. Those are “money to hire more lawyers, judges and other staff to process appeals, or a rewrite of the law by Congress.” In essence, the VA has pushed the backlog from claims to appeals by applying its resources to claims. It appears to be playing Whac-A-Mole with the claims/appeals process; one goes down, the other pops up.
Since more money for more staff isn’t likely, a rewrite of laws seems more possible. And that is where the philosophical question of the needs of the many versus the needs of the individual comes in. Cutting the number of appeals vets can file would make sense from a purely logistical perspective. Some vets appeal dozens of times – or more – and never win. Is infinity the right number of allowable appeals? Probably not. Is one the right number of allowable appeals? Probably not. But where in between those two is the right number? And how does Congress make that decision, as it will inevitably have to do?
Everyone in politics today wants to “support the vets.” Certainly doing anything that appears to harm veterans individually is a ticket to political trouble; I can hear the negative ads in my head already.
But endless appeals inevitably mean endless backlogs. And the person who can make the political argument that some limit – however big or small it turns out to be – will help vets collectively, will make a huge difference for the rest of the vets waiting in line for their cases to be decided.
A Veteran's Response:
Ms. Rose's essay basically blames veterans for gaming the VA system via the appeals process. "Why do they do it," she asks. "Because they can."
I say, because we must! I can only understand VA's appeals process from my own perspective, and part of that is VA's claims process as well....they cannot be separated.
Veterans currently face an average of 315 days for an initial claim to be processed. In 2012, the Board of Veterans Appeals (BVA) overturned 28.9% of the denials issued for compensation claims, and errors were found in another 46% of appealed claims. These claims were sent back to the original VA Regional Office for an additional review.
Tom Murphy, VBA’s director of compensation services, agreed that initial accuracy has a significant role in keeping down the backlog of both repeated claims and appeals. “If you’re having quality issues, it takes longer to work a case the second or third time than it takes to get it right the first time,”
An appeal is submitted when a veteran claims VA errored on his/her claim. A claim is an initial application for benefits – medical care as well as compensation, Yes, I agree some of my brothers and sisters do submit an inappropriate number of claims, as also appeal with faint justification VA's inappropriate VA's decisions on the claims.
But: Claims are more typically for illnesses and injuries the veteran legitimately believes tied to military service. Appeals more typically are for errors the veteran believes (correctly or not) VA made in deciding the claim. Appeals mount up because of errors made by the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) in evaluating claims and also because veterans and their advocates (veterans service officers from VFW, DAV, etc.) themselves made errors in preparing claims. There are many other reasons, and certainly gaming the system is one of them, but the system's errors are basically to blame.
First among them is the remand procedure. Remands are where the Board of Veterans Appeals finds mistakes by VA in processed the claim. A remand vindicates the veteran but does nothing to resolve the claim, instead squeezing it back into the workload of the regional claims staff. The VA makes mistakes on more than 50% of all claims it processes, most of which are never appealed.
• First Solution: Better quality initial claims decisions
• Second Solution: Faster preparation by regional offices of appealed claims for forwarding to BVA
• Third Solution: BVA must be given authority to resolve an issue without a useless remand!
• Fourth Solution: Regional offices should be given reconsideration authority when VA errors are noted while preparing appealed claims before forwarding to BVA
• Fifth Solution: VA should impose a token $10 filing fee for subsequent appeals...a vet's very first appeal is free but a $5 threshold is imposed thereafter for all appeals
• Sixth Solution: Some common sense. For instance, once the C-123 issue was resolved for post-Vietnam veterans, BVA began remanding claims with airplane details but completely outside the scope (by years, location, other facts) of the C-123 Agent Orange issue
Why a failed appeals process, choking on nearly a million frustrated claims?
1. An evolving medical situation, or age, presenting additional illnesses or injuries requiring new claims
2. VA decisions which only partially address issues claimed, leaving particulars to be appealed
3. VA's evolving rules. For instance, C-123 veterans were for years denied all benefits but ground rules changed and permitted claims and appeals
4. The veteran learns from the denied claim what proofs or arguments should have been made in the initial application, and either appeals or repeats the claim with new and material evidence
5. VA's errors in deciding claims
6. VA regional offices taking years to prepare an appealed denied claim before forwarding to the BVA; BVA actually decides appeals rather quickly once received, but the majority of the years a veteran must wait for an appeal is wasted at the regional office waiting for the claim to be readied for the BVA
7. VA has an inadequate system for veterans to request reconsideration of denied claims, and veterans too often leap to an appeal rather than a faster reconsideration process
8. VA permits no input from a vet's own VA physician in support of a disability claim or appeal, yet VA staffs the BVA with medical experts to help oppose appeals. Similarly, VA staffs the BVA with attorneys to argue against veterans' claims. An appeal is thus an uphill battle for a veteran with VA bringing in big guns to oppose a claim...and leaving an incentive to appeal
9. VA's regional office Decision Review Officer (DRO) program is overburdened by its DROs working claims and not appeals
10. One need a veteran continues with claims and appeals even after 100% service connection is granted is to address Combat Related Special Compensation requirements
11. Sometimes a veteran believes strongly an important issue is unresolved even with a 100% service connected decision on a separate issue, and seeks VA acknowledgement. Awards for 100% service connection should include language to encompass all remaining but unresolved issues under the one decision
12. Veterans service organizations should exercise judgement in supporting veterans' appeals, rather than rubber-stamping them past all reason; at some point VSOs should decline to represent a veteran any further
13. Legislation is needed to help address a failed appeals system
