Posts tagged Veterans benefits
Secretary Shinseki Details Plan to End Homelessness for Veterans
Nov 4th
General Eric Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs at the Veterans Homelessness Summit
I attended the Homelessness for Veterans summit yesterday for a chance to speak directly with Secretary Shinseki and to hear him unveiled the five-Year plan to end homelessness for veterans at Homeless Summit.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 3, at the “VA National Summit Ending Homelessness Among Veterans,” Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki unveiled the department’s comprehensive plan to end homelessness among Veterans by combining the resources of government, business and the private sector.
About one-third of all adult homeless men and nearly one-fifth of all homeless adults served in the military.
About 3 percent of the overall homeless population served in Iraq or Afghanistan. About 3,700 from the recent wars have been seen in VA homeless outreach programs and more than 550 have been treated in a VA-connected residential program.
It is estimated that 130,000 veterans are homeless on a typical night in the U.S. Shinseki said that is down from 195,000 six years ago. But, because of the poor economy, he said up to 15 percent more veterans could be on the streets in five years.
“That’s not going to happen. We’re going to go the other way,” Shinseki said. “You all didn’t work for the past six years to see things reversed.”
Shinseki added: “Even in tough economic times this is still the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world and no veteran should be living on the streets without care and without hope.”
“President Obama and I are personally committed to ending homelessness among Veterans within the next five years,” said Shinseki. “Those who have served this nation as Veterans should never find themselves on the streets, living without care and without hope.”
Shinseki’s comprehensive plan to end homelessness includes preventive measures like discharge planning for incarcerated Veterans re-entering society, supportive services for low-income Veterans and their families and a national referral center to link Veterans to local service providers. Additionally, the plan calls for expanded efforts for education, jobs, health care and housing.
“Our plan enlarges the scope of VA’s efforts to combat homelessness,” said Shinseki. “In the past, VA focused largely on getting homeless Veterans off the streets. Our five-year plan aims also at preventing them from ever ending up homeless.”
Other features of the plan outlined by Shinseki include:
- The new Post-9/11 GI Bill provides a powerful option for qualified Veterans to pursue a fully funded degree program at a state college or university. It is a major component of the fight against Veteran homelessness.
- VA is collaborating with the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration to certify Veteran-owned small businesses and service-disabled Veteran-owned small businesses for listing on the Federal Supply Register, which enhances their visibility and competitiveness – creating jobs for Veterans.
- VA will spend $3.2 billion next year to prevent and reduce homelessness among Veterans. That includes $2.7 billion on medical services and more than $500 million on specific homeless programs.
VA aggressively diagnoses and treats the unseen wounds of war that often lead to homelessness – severe isolation, dysfunctional behaviors, depression and substance abuse. Last week, VA and the Defense Department cosponsored a national summit on mental health that will help both agencies better coordinate mental health efforts.
VA partners with more than 600 community organizations to provide transitional housing to 20,000 Veterans. It also works with 240 public housing authorities to provide permanent housing to homeless Veterans and their families under a partnership with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The VA/HUD partnership will provide permanent housing to more than 20,000 Veterans and their families.
Over the duration of the conference it is expected that over 1,200 homeless service providers from federal and state agencies, the business community, and faith-based and community providers will attend and participate in the summit.
“This is not a summit on homelessness among Veterans,” added Shinseki. “It’s a summit on ending homelessness among Veterans.”
SOURCE U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Popularity: 6% [?]
Bill: Have VA pay old claims automatically
Jul 1st
By Rick Maze – Staff writer
Military Times
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.
Butterfield’s legislation, though, focuses on the estimated 20 percent of claims that are not easily resolved, usually because the claim involves a veteran claiming multiple disabilities from a variety of causes who is not able to provide documents that show a clear link to military service for all of the disabilities.
A deadline might help force the VA to move faster, Butterfield said. “The decision should be made within 180 days,” Butterfield said. “Providing a deadline gives the VA an added incentive to make a timely decision, and provides our veterans with an assurance against claims languishing for years.”
The bill was referred to the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee for consideration, a panel that has discussed the idea of having claims automatically approved if they languish. The VA and some veterans’ service organizations have opposed the idea, worried that a deadline encourages shortcuts by the VA — like quick denials — and also might lead some veterans to file extremely complicated and not well-documented claims in an effort to make the process drag out beyond the automatic payment deadline.
Popularity: 14% [?]
The VA and brokering claims: Whack-a-Mole at the County Fair
Jun 26th
Have you ever played the game “Whack-a-Mole?”
It’s the game you may happen upon at a county fair or arcade that requires you to whack the head of the mole with a rubber mallet as it sticks its’ head out of the hole. The object is to whack as many moles as you can in a specified time limit. Nobody ever gets all of the moles; all you get are points, which, in the end, are worthless.
I would like to use the “Whack-a-Mole” analogy in explaining a practice the VA uses with its regional offices. It is simply called “brokering,” and it is having a debilitating effect on the VA claims process.
Here is how it works: Currently VBA replaces lost staffing in regional offices according to the office’s ability to process claims. Specifically, the more productive an office is, the more staff they receive. While this policy may encourage management at an underperforming office in the short run, over time it magnifies the deficiencies at the underperforming office, resulting in disproportionate backlogs and extended delays for the veterans served by that office.
This policy has existed for at least the past five years. While VBA attempts to compensate by shifting or “brokering” work to other offices, this does not solve the problems at the underperforming offices. Further, while brokering cases is an excellent temporary measure to deal with workload fluctuations, it has become routine for some offices. Continuous brokering of work takes on the trappings of “Whack-a-Mole”; as soon as you push down the workload at one location, it rises dramatically in another.
The fact is, the policy of starving certain offices is counterproductive, both for employees and for the veterans they serve. If VBA is unable to provide those offices with the leadership, resources and training to make them productive, then it needs to develop the corporate, institutional and political courage to change the mission of those offices to something other than claims processing.
Whacking the mole may get the VBA some points in the short term, but for veterans waiting for their claims to be processed, the long-term result could prove to be worthless.
Bob Jackson is the Assistant Director for National Veterans Service for the VFW. He continues to lobby Congress to improve the delivery of VA benefits and compensation to millions of our nation’s veterans.
Popularity: 15% [?]
Veterans’ Benefits: Getting it right the first time
Jun 24th
In Fiscal Year (FY) 2008, more than 2.95 million veterans received VA Veterans Benefit Administration (VBA) disability compensation benefits. Providing quality decisions in a timely manner has been, and will continue to be, one of VA’s most difficult challenges. A majority of the claims processed by the VBA’s 57 Regional Offices (ROs) involve multiple issues that are legally and medically complex as well as time consuming to adjudicate.
I believe the greatest benefits can be found by fixing the front end of the claims operation. Most court decisions today focus on procedural problems stemming from notice to claimants and development, or failures to properly develop evidence. The VCAA was created because VA would sometimes take shortcuts in the claims development period, failing to give claimants adequate notice of what they needed to produce to prove their claims. However, as we have seen since its passage, it is quite possible to become bogged down in the notice requirements while attempting to dot every “i” and cross every “t”.
We support the VCAA because we believe it helps level the playing field for veterans. The VA has the knowledge of what is required in order to grant or increase benefits to veterans. They are required to pass that knowledge on so that claimants know, too, and can focus their energies in obtaining the necessary evidence to perfect their claim.
This is not rocket science. If a veteran claims service connection for the residuals of a knee injury, the VA can tell her that she needs to show that she has a disability of the knee now, that she injured the knee in service or something that happened in service caused a knee problem and to provide VA with medical evidence that shows the current problem to be related to the event in service. These are the same three things that have always been required to prove service connection.
The requirements for obtaining an increase in benefits are equally finite: a claimant must show that their service-connected disability has worsened sufficiently to obtain a higher evaluation. In order to obtain an increase for that knee problem, the veteran must show the existence of arthritis in the joint which limits motion or causes pain, or demonstrates instability in the joint.
Again, this is not rocket science. Software could be developed that allows a VSR in a Pre-Determination team to simply answer a question on a computer screen concerning whether the claim is for service-connection or an increase and what the claimed condition is. Now, as you suspect, the computer can generate paragraph after paragraph explaining what is required and if the veteran is claiming 12 conditions then the letter can become quite long. Yet, if the object is to ensure that claimants have the information necessary to perfect their claims then it can be done with properly programmed computers. Further, these software programs can be made available to claimants in a simple, easily accessed, public web site. Any curious veteran could enter the web site, answer a series of simple questions and receive detailed information on what is needed to obtain the benefit.
Technology, technology, technology
If VA takes advantage of the rapid advances in technology they will be able to create efficiencies that currently do not exist. For instance, the VA currently has thousands of all electronic claims files. These cases are largely Benefits Delivery at Discharge (BDD) cases and the electronic claims files offer VA a unique opportunity to create a separate office to handle all electronic claims, allowing the VA to experiment and create an environment unencumbered by paper files. Imagine the possibility of having two or three Rating VSR’s located in separate sections of a building reviewing one claims file and making decisions on different elements of the claim simultaneously. The efficiencies that such a system creates could be significant.
We understand that VA is establishing a claims processing laboratory in Providence, RI to explore and develop these efficiencies. We welcome this effort and look forward to viewing the results of this work in the years to come.
What about the millions of existing paper claim files? VA rightfully believes that copying these files would be cost prohibitive. We agree. However, VA receives thousands of requests each year for copies of claims files. Currently each file is photocopied and sent to the claimant. What if each office was equipped with a scanner so that instead of photocopying the file, it is scanned. The claimant would still receive a paper copy of the file and at the same time, the VA would have yet another electronic record.
If the VA wants to preclude an ever-growing mountain of claims continuing to back up in the system, they need to ensure that they are providing a system that rewards getting it right the first time. American veterans seeking VA disability benefits deserve better treatment than what they are currently getting.
Bob Jackson is the Assistant Director for National Veterans Service for the VFW. He continues to lobby Congress to improve the delivery of VA benefits and compensation to millions of our nation’s veterans.
Popularity: 7% [?]
