Law to protect vets slows claims process

Law to protect vets slows claims process
By Tom Philpott, Special to Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, July 12, 2008



In the last decade, the Department of Veterans Affairs has doubled the number of disability claim processors on staff, and yet the average time to process a claim has climbed during that period from four months to six.

From January 2007 through June 2008, as VA added 2,700 claim processors to its inventory of 8,000, the average time to process a claim still fell unimpressively, from 183 days to 181.

"Something’s going on here that isn’t right, that needs to be fixed. I don’t know what the hell it is," said a frustrated Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., during a hearing Wednesday of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

"In the 1990s you were at 120 days" to process a claim. "Was there something in the process that changed," Tester asked Michael Walcoff, deputy undersecretary for benefits for the Veterans’ Benefits Administration.

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