And The Waits Continue
The current official back log of disability claims is approximately 400,000 and 85,000 of those have been pending for over 180 days. For years initial decisions have taken approximately six months to be made thus, predictably, in 2007 the decisions on veteran disability compensation claims took, on average, 183 days (pg 119). Moreover, appeals of insufficient disability ratings or denials can last years. On average, it takes 4.4 years, “for a veteran to adjudicate a claim all the way to a BVA [Board of Veterans Appeals] decision,” not taking into account the time between an initial decision and a veterans’ filing of a “notice of disagreement” which can take as long as one year (pg. 43). These may be just numbers to the general public but to veterans and their families these delays are all too real as the following article demonstrates.
The Buffalo news: Veterans fight lengthy war over benefits
Charles Leist fought his way through a bureaucratic labyrinth for 10 years before finally winning an appeal on his military disability pension. The Buffalo veteran who fought in Vietnam and the first Gulf War is grateful for the more than $100,000 in back allowance he received a few months ago but says he could have used the money when it really counted.
“It would have been nice to have had that money when I needed it to put my kids through college,” he said. “After waiting for 10 years, my disability was raised from 30 percent to 80 percent.”
Some, like Leist, wait a decade, others two decades or even longer.
“All too often, it gets bounced around, and no final decision is made,” said David E. Autry, a spokesman for Disabled American Veterans in Washington, D. C., who worries about the new generation of disabled veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“With the VA having trouble handling disability claims from previous generations of wartime veterans, this new generation may be in for a long and bumpy ride,” he said.
Veterans advocates say the system, in fact, counts on veterans giving up or just dying off in order to get out of paying benefits. Read on…
For more on the incessant delays and wrongs suffered by generations of disable veterans, Vets Under Seige: How America Deceives and Dishonors Those Who Fight Our Battles is a book worth reading.
