January 25, 2013
agent orange legacy, appeals, audits, benefits, claims, disabled children of Vietnam veterans, military families, veterans, Veterans Affairs
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In a new audit, Veterans’ Disability Benefits: Timely Processing Remains a Daunting Challenge, the GAO notes that VBA’s paper-based claims processing system involves “multiple hand-offs, which can lead to misplaced and lost documents and can cause unnecessary time delays.”
The official report concludes in all-too familiar fashion that waiting times have increased for veterans in part because VBA regional offices have shifted resources away from appeals and toward claims in recent years. The GAO confirms that VBA processes new and easy claims first, which often leaves older, complicated claims gathering dust.
This means that after four years of VAOIG audits, VBA still fails veterans with an unacceptably high error rate.
