Hallelujah! Someone in congress is finally listening!

While I seriously doubt Rep. G.K. Butterfield has any clue what I've been saying all this time, it appears that at least someone is finally listening to the veterans and what this backlog of claims is doing to them. They have been suffering because no one in the government got ready for any of them when they sent them into Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bill: Have VA pay old claims automatically

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jun 30, 2009 11:25:16 EDT

A North Carolina lawmaker proposes tackling the backlog of veterans’ disability claims by awarding benefits to veterans after 18 months if their claim hasn’t been processed.

Veterans Affairs Department officials have told Congress they are, on average, processing disability compensation claims within 162 days and have a goal of cutting the average to 120 days. But Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., is one of many lawmakers who think there is a limit to how patient veterans could be in waiting for money they are due.

“Backlogs are at the point where veterans must wait an average of six months for a decision on benefits claims and some veterans are waiting as long as four years,” Butterfield said in a statement. “Veterans deserve better than this.”

Butterfield introduced a bill on Friday, HR 3087, that would automatically approve a veteran’s claim if no decision is made by the VA within 18 months. The bill doesn’t say exactly how the VA would do this, but creates a task force to monitor VA to make sure the 18-month deadline isn’t met with an arbitrary denial just before the claim must be paid.

The bill comes as the number of unprocessed veterans claims exceeds 915,000 — a 100,000 jump since the beginning of the year. In testimony two weeks ago before a House committee, VA officials said the current 162 days is 17 days less than one year ago, a sign that they are beginning to make process.
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Bill: Have VA pay old claims automatically

There are over 32 posts on the backlog of claims. This is one of them and Linda Blimes should have been listened to all along.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Potential VA benefits chief has new ideas
No I don't have ESP and I did not go to Harvard. I just pay attention and read about people like Linda Blimes thinking it would be a great idea to take care of the veterans by pushing their claims thru. Ironic as it is this showed up today on Army Times, but hey, anyone paying attention feels the same way.
Potential VA benefits chief has new ideas/
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Feb 2, 2009 17:36:26 EST
A Harvard University researcher with some radical ideas about how to reduce the backlog of veterans disability claims appears to be in line to head the Veterans Benefits Administration. Linda Blimes, a public policy lecturer and research at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, wants the Department of Veterans Affairs to operate like the Internal Revenue Service — on an honor system that trusts veterans claiming service-connected disabilities.

All veterans claims would be approved as soon as they are filed, with a random audit conducted to “weed out and deter fraudulent claims,” Blimes told the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee in testimony in 2008.Ninety percent of veterans disability claims end up being paid after they make it through the system, she said — proof, she said, that most veterans are asking only for what they deserve.Immediate payment of at least a minimum benefit would help to reduce the average 180-day waiting time for initial benefits claims to be processed and allow VA to redeploy the employees processing those claims to work on more complicated appeals, she said.

Blimes also has talked of a vastly simplified disability rating system that would have just four ratings instead of the current 10 for service-connected disabilities and illnesses.Blimes has not been formally announced as a nominee, but her name is being circulated among lawmakers and congressional staff in what has become a standard procedure to determine whether there is any strong opposition to her taking the key post.Her idea of a streamlined claims process has some prominent supporters, among them Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., the House Veterans Affairs Committee chairman who has talked of automatic claims approval as a way to quickly eliminate the claims backlog.
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