Ohio lawmakers question wait for vets' benefits

CINCINNATI (AP) — Mem­bers of Ohio’s con­gres­sional del­e­ga­tion have sent a let­ter to the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs say­ing mil­i­tary vet­er­ans are wait­ing too long for responses to their dis­abil­ity claims and urg­ing the depart­ment to act quickly to resolve the backlog.

Fif­teen of the state’s mem­bers of Con­gress, includ­ing Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans, sent the let­ter Mon­day to Vet­er­ans Admin­is­tra­tion Sec­re­tary Eric Shin­seki, describ­ing the lengthy back­log as “unacceptable.”

“In our state of Ohio, some vet­er­ans have had to wait up to nearly a year for their claims to be processed,” the let­ter states. The del­e­ga­tion also wrote that “our vet­er­ans deserve bet­ter and more effi­cient ser­vice” from the department.

The VA said Tues­day that the total num­ber of dis­abil­ity com­pen­sa­tion claims pend­ing before the Vet­er­ans Ben­e­fits Admin­is­tra­tion as of Mon­day was about 867,000.

Law­mak­ers in both par­ties agreed last fall to come up with more money to help the VA reduce its dis­abil­ity claims back­log, and the let­ter points out that the recently passed National Defense Autho­riza­tion Act requires the VA to pro­vide Con­gress with a report on its plan for that reduction.

U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot, a Cincin­nati Repub­li­can who signed the let­ter, said Tues­day that the del­e­ga­tion is look­ing for­ward to the report, but it wants action to reduce the back­log as quickly as possible.

“These men and women who have worn the uni­form of our coun­try and often have put their lives on the line deserve to be treated bet­ter than they cur­rently are by the VA,” Chabot said.

VA spokes­woman Mea­gan Lutz said the agency received the let­ter and will respond to the con­cerns. In an emailed state­ment, the VA said it had suc­cess­fully installed a new dig­i­tal, paper­less sys­tem to speed the pro­cess­ing of claims in 18 regional offices by the end of last year and expects to install the sys­tem in all 56 regional offices by the end of 2013.

“We rec­og­nize that too many vet­er­ans are wait­ing too long to get the ben­e­fits they have earned and deserve,” the state­ment said, adding that fix­ing a decades-old prob­lem isn’t easy.

The VA had said in a state­ment ear­lier this month that it com­pleted a record-breaking 1 mil­lion claims per year the last three fis­cal years, but that end­ing reliance on the paper sys­tem was crit­i­cal to timely and accu­rate claims processing.

While Chabot said that the dig­i­tal paper­less sys­tem is encour­ag­ing, “let’s not make that an excuse to delay folks currently.”

He said his office has received numer­ous calls and let­ters from vet­er­ans frus­trated with the slow­ness of the cur­rent claims process.

The most recent VA fig­ures, updated in Novem­ber 2012, show Ohio vet­er­ans wait­ing an aver­age of 330 days — 58 days longer than the national aver­age of 272 days for dis­abil­ity com­pen­sa­tion, accord­ing to Lutz.

“I under­stand the chal­lenges that the VA faces,” Chabot said.

He said that the VA is a very large orga­ni­za­tion “that for the most part works very hard, but it is a bureau­cracy and some­times they need to improve.”

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Jan 29 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.