The biggest obstacle to veterans health care, the reason for the bottleneck resulting in over 400,000 claims backlogged in a single year, is veterans.
Or that's what the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee was told Wednesday by two witnesses,
Michael P. Allen of Stetson University College of Law) and John Wilson of Disabled American Veterans. Apparently, were it not for those pesky veterans with health claims, the VA's medical centers and hospitals would run just fine.
No, that doesn't make any sense but neither did they and four of us just watched, open mouthed, in horror as the proceedings continued.
Currently, the VAO has 406,000 pending claims and, thanks to Senator Jon Tester's questioning, we learned that they had approximately 25,000 to 30,000 more than that a year ago. What's the problem?
Was it staffing?
No, the VA's Patrick Dunne insisted that wasn't it. In fact, more employees would tie up supervisors with even more administrative duties. Since the GAO has recently explained that part of the problem is that a number of trained professionals are retiring (true in most fields due to the demographic bulge known as the Baby Boom), it would seem the obvious answer was to get serious about hiring and training. But Dunne didn't want anymore employees. Remember that in 2010, when the VA is again trying to make excuses for their lousy rate of approving claims.
Their lousy rate?
Veterans can wait a full year's for their claim to be addressed. This is a claim, not an appeal. Their initial filing for health care can take up to one year. Can, in fact, the Committee learned, take more than one year. If a claim has not been addressed in 365 days, Dunne stated it went to the VA Tiger Team. This is a claim and they're so backlogged that they actually have teams to work on health care claims when they haven't been addressed in a full year's time.
Now presumably such claims aren't life or death matters or we'd see them splashed on the front page of every newspaper in the country; however, when you're the one needing medical treatment, it matters to you. It matters whether you're waiting a few weeks or up to and beyond a year.
And the VA wants to claim they don't need more help?
The Government Accountability Office's Daniel Bertoni told the committee, "We have reported that an infusion of a large number of staff has the potential to improve VA's capacity. However, quickly absorbing these staff will likely pose human capital challenges for VA, such as how to train and deploy them. The additional staff has helped VA process more claims and appeals overall, but as VA has acknowledged, it has also reduced individual staff productivity. . . . According to VA, this decline in productivity is attributable primarily to new staff who have not yet become fully proficient at processing claims and to the loss of experienced staff due to retirements. VA expects its productivity to decline further before it improves, in part because of the challenges of training and integrating new staff."
What's the problem here? It's hard to believe people on the job for over a year would still be struggling. If that is the case, it goes to training. Which may be why Bertoni repeatedly told the panel (including during questioning from Senator Patty Murray) that reviews are needed and why he said that was more important to "any manager" than just "going out talking to the troops [VA employees]" because if "you do the analysis -- and indications of problems in certain areas, you can take, make remedial interventions. To date, I don't believe that is occurring."
Also on Wednesday, the House Veterans Affairs Committee held a hearing entitled Meeting the Needs of Injured Veterans in the Military Paralympic Program and Committee Chair Bob Filner noted at the start of the hearing, "I think you all know since the early years of our country, Congress has had to reassess programs created to care for our men and women in uniform, our veterans who have courageously answered our call to duty and their families who have joined in the military experience." On the same day the public learns the VA is not conducting adequate staff reviews, US House Rep Filner is noting how important it is for Congress to do periodic reviews.
And yet somehow the VA thinks it is exempt?
During that hearing, US House Rep asked Paralyzed Veterans of America's Carl Blake about outreach and rural areas and how the VA could help with that. Blake responded, "I had a good answer until you asked me what the VA could do and then I lost it."
As they say, funny because it's true.
And it'll remain true as long as the VA blames everyone else for their problems (including the shameless blaming of veterans) and refuses to conduct the needed self-reviews of their actions and of their staff. Why is their a bottleneck at the VA? Because of the VA.
For more on the two hearings, see: