VA claims process needs radical changes

Filner: VA claims process needs radical changes

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Aug 1, 2009 10:33:21 EDT

Improving the veterans’ claims process will require more than just hiring more staff, the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman said Friday.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., said in an interview that radical change is needed to eliminate the backlog of claims and make the whole process easier for veterans by automatically accepting claims for disabilities rated at 30 percent or less, with only spot-checking for accuracy.

Filner called this the “IRS model,” a reference to the Internal Revenue Service process of auditing a small percentage of federal income tax returns, not every one.

He said automatic claims approval, with some auditing, is a way of clear what he estimates are 100,000 claims from Vietnam veterans related to exposure to Agent Orange. And the practice also could put a big dent in the overall backlog of all claims pending before VA, which Filner estimates to be almost 1 million.

“When you are getting to a 1 million backlog, the insult is so great you really have to do something,” he said.
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VA claims process needs radical changes