Published by Bob Beauprez
Politics in America have perhaps never been as divided and polarized as they are right now. But one thing everyone can and should agree on is that government has an obligation to attend to the needs of the brave men and women who served this country in uniform.
Although the Department of Veterans Affairs is full of good people who care deeply for our veterans and wish to provide the best service for them day in and day out, the sad fact is that our government has fallen far short of that obligation for quite some time. Unfortunately, proposed reforms in the current VA budget request would erode that obligation even further.
We have all heard the stories of inadequate facilities and medical treatment and long wait times in VA medical centers. But probably the most dysfunctional element of the VA system is the processing of disability benefit claims.
The VA is experiencing a backlog in disability benefit claims that could well be described as a crisis. A claim is considered “backlogged” when it exceeds 125 days — about four months. Of the approximately 520,000 pending VA disability claims, 191,000, more than one-third, are officially backlogged. This figure skyrocketed during the pandemic last year when the staff at the National Personnel Records Center were sent home and much of the processing work simply ground to a halt. It is only expected to get worse as the effects from exposure to toxic burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq begin to manifest themselves in veterans of those wars.
You would think that given this egregious backlog of claims, the Biden administration would explore every avenue possible to help provide our veterans with some....
Read full article on Washington Examiner.