Huffington Post blames Obama instead of Congress

WOW this sounds really bad.

 

The problem is, this report fails so miserably.

Veterans Often Wait Over A Year For Benefits, Some Wait Up To 642 Days As VA Struggles To Handle Claims
The Huffington Post
By Nick Wing
Posted: 03/14/2013

The Department of Veterans Affairs is failing to keep up with a torrent of benefits claims, and the backlog leaves many service members high and dry for well over a year after first filing their forms, a new report from the Center for Investigative Reporting finds.

From the CIR report:

The agency tracks and widely reports the average wait time: 273 days. But the internal data indicates that veterans filing their first claim, including those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, wait nearly two months longer, between 316 and 327 days. Those filing for the first time in America’s major population centers wait up to twice as long -- 642 days in New York, 619 days in Los Angeles and 542 days in Chicago.

The ranks of veterans waiting more than a year for their benefits grew from 11,000 in 2009, the first year of Obama’s presidency, to 245,000 in December -- an increase of more than 2,000 percent.

And the VA is predicting that the situation will get worse, as the number of veterans waiting on the department to process their claims is expected to surge past the current 900,000 and toward a million by the end of March. A spokesman for the VA told the CIR that the department is being inundated by a nearly 50-percent increase in the number of filed claims. He said the growth was due to a combination of increasing numbers of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans returning home, broadening claims for PTSD and Gulf War illness, and new guidelines allowing Vietnam vets to request compensation for complications due to exposure to Agent Orange.
read more here

I read the article and while waiting to find what he failed at doing, I reached the end of the article without discovering what this earth shaking news was.

Are things screwed up for veterans? You bet. Are they waiting too long for claims to be approved? Hell ya! But since President Obama made it easier for veterans to apply for benefits under Agent Orange, PTSD and Gulf War Syndrome, congress has not come thru with the necessary funding to do it. It takes two years to hire and train claims processors but this is also an issue for the states as well. Veterans Affairs Benefits has links to all the budgets and what Congress ended up doing, which is a fascinating read and I used part of it yesterday pointing out what was in President Obama's VA Budget request.

Here is something else you need to know. All areas of the country are not the same. One state may process claims faster than others while one state may have more errors than others. If you read this blog, you'd already know that.

The Veterans Benefits Administration As one of three administrations within VA, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), in partnership with the Veterans Health Administration and the National Cemetery Administration, provides benefits and services to Servicemembers, Veterans, and their families in recognition of their service to the Nation.

VBA has been undergoing a major transformation that is people-centric, results-oriented, and a forward-looking integration of solutions that will ensure total lifelong engagement with Servicemembers, Veterans, their families and survivors.

Within VBA, there are three Deputy Under Secretaries led by the Under Secretary for Benefits. Their organizations provide oversight for Disability Assistance, Economic Opportunity, and Field Operations. Additionally, there are four program offices including Strategic Planning, Management, Resource Management and Performance Analysis and Integrity. To help you better understand the services VBA offers, a brief summary of some the offices that directly support benefit delivery is as follows:

There are four business lines under the Office of Disability Assistance:
Compensation Service: Oversees the delivery of disability compensation to Veterans disabled by an injury or disease incurred or aggravated during active military service.

Pension and Fiduciary Service: Provides program oversight that helps wartime Veterans, their families, and survivors with financial challenges by providing supplemental income through Veterans Pension, Death Pension, and Dependency and Indemnity Compensation.

Insurance Service: Maintains life insurance programs that give financial security and peace of mind for Servicemembers, Veterans, and their families.

Benefits Assistance Service: Facilitates Client Services and Outreach, Web Communications, and ensures Quality and Training for VBA employees who engage Servicemembers, Veterans, and their families through services such as the National Call Center.

As for the long wait times in having claims approved, that's been going on since the 90's. My husband's claim took six years while his buddy's claim took even longer. A Vietnam veteran's claim was just settled after six years of waiting and suffering. There have always been terrible problems with veterans having to wait, so because President Obama made it easier for older veterans waiting even longer for justice, they ended up adding to the already overloaded system because two wars were started without congress fully funding the VA when they should have in order to take care of all our veterans.

If this article had been honest, they would have reported the historical data and not just picked out who they wanted to blame.

I blame congress first and the President Obama but for a much different reason. He has not ordered his Joint Chiefs to hold anyone accountable for Military Suicides, Sexual Assaults, Wrongful Discharges and inadequate PTSD programs. Has not held them accountable for the deplorable outcomes including Congress! He has done a lot for veterans but with what they have been up against even before he took office the first time, he just hasn't done enough and congress hasn't either.

But they sure got a lot of comments.  Over a thousand of them and most attacking Obama.