Veterans Affairs kept secret for years, and years and more years

Who are we talking about when articles appear on the Department of Veterans Affairs? Are we talking about the healthy and uninjured? No, we're talking about the wounded and disabled veterans we have comprised of veterans from all wars. The VA is compensating less than 4 million of them among the over 22 million veterans alive today. This is a nation of over 300 million people yet we can't even get it right for this percentage of veterans! There is seriously something wrong in this country and it begins with members of Congress.

A reminder of what was going on back in 2008 with the Department of Veterans Affairs

In his first appearance before Congress since becoming secretary, Peake also sought to assure lawmakers that President Bush’s proposed 2009 VA budget of $91 billion would be sufficient to meet the growing demands of veterans of a protracted Iraq war. The proposal is a 3.7 percent increase from the previous year, but several lawmakers have criticized it as inadequate after factoring in inflation.

Peake wants to reduce wait times from roughly 180 days to 145 days by the start of next year. He cited aggressive efforts to hire staff, noting the VA will have 3,100 new staff by 2009. VA also is working to get greater online access to Pentagon medical information that he said will allow staff to process claims faster and move toward a system of electronic filing of claims.

Peake promised to “virtually eliminate” the current list of 69,000 veterans who have waited more than 30 days for an appointment to get VA medical care. Such long waits runs counter to department policy, and a group of Iraq war veterans have filed a lawsuit alleging undue delays. He said VA plans to open 64 new community-based outpatient clinics this year and 51 next year to improve access to health care in rural areas.

“We will take all measures necessary to provide them with timely benefits and services, to give them complete information about the benefits they have earned through their courageous service, and to implement streamlined processes free of bureaucratic red tape,” Peake said in testimony prepared for a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing Thursday.

And by 2009, this was the report about veterans waiting to have claims approved.

A new report about Veterans Affairs Department employees squirreling away tens of thousands of unopened letters related to benefits claims is sparking fresh concerns that veterans and their survivors are being cheated out of money.

VA officials acknowledge further credibility problems based on a new report of a previously undisclosed 2007 incident in which workers at a Detroit regional office turned in 16,000 pieces of unprocessed mail and 717 documents turned up in New York in December during amnesty periods in which workers were promised no one would be penalized.

“Veterans have lost trust in VA,” Michael Walcoff, VA’s under secretary for benefits, said at a hearing Tuesday. “That loss of trust is understandable, and winning back that trust will not be easy.”

Unprocessed and unopened mail was just one problem in VA claims processing mentioned by Belinda Finn, VA’s assistant inspector general for auditing, in testimony before the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

But as bad as that was, the claim backlog in 2009 was this,

The VA's claims backlog, which includes all benefits claims and all appeals at the Veterans Benefits Administration and the Board of Veterans Appeals at VA, was 803,000 on Jan. 5, 2009. The backlog hit 915,000 on May 4, 2009, a staggering 14 percent increase in four months.

Watchdog report on Veterans Affairs kept secret for years
Washington Examiner
BY MARK FLATTEN
OCTOBER 22, 2014

Deliberate falsification of patient wait times was confirmed at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix in 2008, but the agency’s inspector general kept its findings secret, a report obtained by the Washington Examiner shows.

The 2008 investigation confirms the IG and VA officials were aware that schedulers were using bogus tactics to “game” the system, allowing them to falsely claim patients were getting the medical care they needed within agency deadlines.

The tricks used to hide the delays are virtually identical to those that were revealed earlier this year, leading to a nationwide scandal and confirmation that the use of falsified waiting lists was deliberate, “systemic” and potentially criminal.

Yet the 2008 investigation by the IG was deemed “restricted,” meaning it was not publicly released. So the problems identified in 2008 festered at the Phoenix facility until a whistleblower took charges of manipulation of patient records to the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, which in April directed the IG to thoroughly investigate the practices.
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Any questions should be directed to members of Congress asking for your votes next month.