Wounded Times Recorder of Veterans History

Wounded Times Recorder of Veterans History
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 2, 2013

In the last couple of months Wounded Times has been getting a new look. Considering there are now over 20,000 posts held for you to read and research, the old look needed to be replaced. It has become a recorder of our history.

Stories from across the country are not simply forgotten about as we move from one story to another. It is too easy for some reporters to forget what happened last month when they report on what subjects of their interviews tell them.

A great example of this is what happened with the VA claim backlog. Even Jeff Miller, Chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee didn't seem to know what it was like years ago. Wounded Times did.

In 2009 the backlog hit 915,000.

Bill: Have VA pay old claims automatically
Marine Corps Times
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jun 30, 2009

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.

Jeff Miller is from Florida

Florida veterans among the longest wait for VA claims

Memorial Day weekend brought news that VA Backlog in Florida had veterans waiting 433 days.

By the end of June there was a report out of the Tampa Tribune with this piece of news released in a report saying that the VA had decided 2,100 claims for Florida veterans.

The St. Petersburg VA Regional Office will now join in VA efforts to complete the disability claims of veterans who have been waiting more than one year for a decision, while completing the final batch of oldest claims in progress, according to the release.

The office has been the subject of complaints by veterans, some of whom have waited more than 560 days for a decision.

There was a backlog in 2007, 2008 and 2009 but there were also huge backlogs long before the media decided it was important enough to cover. Unless the VA is fixed for real they will keep seeing more suffering while waiting. 

It was not until June of 2013 that the Congress decided to give the VA the funds to hire new claims processors.

U.S. House Votes to Pay For More Veterans’ Claims Processors
Bloomberg News
By Timothy R. Homan
Jun 4, 2013

The U.S. House voted to give the Veterans Affairs Department, which was exempted from this year’s budget cuts and furloughs, the money to hire more staff in fiscal 2014.

The spending bill, which advanced on a vote of 421-4, would allow the department to hire 94 new employees to help handle a backlog of disability claims that has drawn the ire of lawmakers. The department has 56 regional benefits offices serving more than 20 million veterans.

“I will not accept any further excuses; the VA must make progress,” Representative Nita Lowey, the top Democrat on the panel that wrote the appropriations bill, said today.

Average wait times for first-time disability claims range between 316 days and 327 days, according to a May 28 bipartisan letter signed by 165 House lawmakers.

The legislation was the first of its 12 annual spending bills to reach the House floor. It would increase resources for military veterans and reduce funding for Pentagon construction projects.

The bill’s $157.8 billion total is almost $13 billion more than current funding levels.

The Veterans Affairs Department would be given 3.5 percent more in fiscal 2014, in part to help reduce its backlog of disability claims, while funding for Defense Department construction spending would decline by about 7 percent.

“Clearly this is an austere budget year, to put it mildly,” Kentucky Republican Hal Rogers, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said today. “Virtually all areas of the government will face cuts.”

Nothing will get fixed for the sake of our veterans unless we know what is going on as well as what went on before. History matters so they cannot get away with just saying what they want, when they want.

It is the same way with everything else going on. PTSD isn't new. Military Suicides are not new. That is the most depressing thing of all. Politicians and military leaders seem to think they can just pretend they are just learning of all of this but the truth is held here.