Veterans groups divided over claims backlog, VA leadership

[unhappycamper]

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/04/06/2545670/veterans-groups-divided-over-claims.html

Veterans groups divided over claims backlog, VA leadership
TOM PHILPOTT
Published: April 6, 2013 at 12:05 a.m. PDT

With the backlog of compensa-tion claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs having ballooned in recent years, one would expect major veterans service organizations to be among the VA’s harshest critics.

If so, they would join a rising chorus. Network news programs have turned cameras and commentary on the mountain of 598,000 overdue claim decisions pending, suggesting bureaucratic neglect of returning ill and injured vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. Time magazine columnist Joe Klein even asked VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign.

~snip~

But most veteran service organizations aren’t joining that chorus, for perhaps two major reasons. One, they believe they understand better than the loudest critics why the backlog has grown so. Some contributing factors are things these groups actually fought for.

Two, criticism of Shinseki and his team rings hollow to many veterans groups given the administration’s support over the past four years for robust funding of the VA, unprecedented cooperation with vet advocates, and the depth of its commitment to reform a paper-driven claims process.

[MADem]

1. In the Bush years, they didn't have such a terrible backlog!!!!!!

Why?

Because they just DENIED the claims! Easy-peasy!!


Everyone I know who does business with the VA agrees with the remarks in the article about how open they are:

That’s why groups including Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion came to Shinseki’s defense after Klein’s call to resign. That’s why Joseph Violante, legislative director of Disabled American Veterans, told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee that the VA is moving “down the right path” with many of its reform plans even while “processing over a million claims annually, which in my mind is something phenomenal.”

Violante described VA leadership as the most open he has seen in almost 30 years working veterans issues in Washington D.C. He had particular praise for Allison A. Hickey, under secretary for benefits.

At the same hearing, Bart Stichman, executive director of the National Veterans Legal Services Program, praised Shinseki. The organization successfully sued the VA, initially more than 20 years ago, to compensate Vietnam veterans for diseases presumed caused by wartime exposure to herbicides including Agent Orange. Stichman said Shinseki showed courage when, facing a rising claims backlog in 2009, he added three new diseases to the VA’s list of diseases compensable for Vietnam veterans because of Agent Orange.

This required the VA to re-adjudicate 150,000 claims previously denied and to process more than 100,000 fresh claims from Vietnam veterans, including for most anyone with heart disease who ever served in Vietnam.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/04/06/2545670/veterans-groups-divided-over-claims.html#storylink=cpy

[unhappycamper]

2. I'm a huge fan of Gen. Shinseki.

The warmongers in congress are responsible for getting veteran's needs met with $$$$$$. And it is all about money.

Shinseki is limited by the amount of dollars allocated to the Veterans Administration. No money, long waits. No money, lotsa paper. No money, veterans get the short end of the stick again.

[MADem]

3. Me too--Rick is a great guy and a very fair person. He was treated horribly by Bush...and Rick

was RIGHT about the damn war!

I think some of those damn Republicans are mad that he was so doggone right.