{"id":36352,"date":"2013-06-21T12:30:46","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T16:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=36352"},"modified":"2013-06-21T12:30:46","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T16:30:46","slug":"va-making-progress-or-scamming-the-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=36352","title":{"rendered":"VA making progress or scamming the numbers?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The VA seems to be making some progress in recent weeks … from\u00a0Politico<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Veterans Affairs Department is chipping away at a massive inventory of disability claims for veterans, reducing the number of claims considered backlogged by about 13 percent in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

But in recent months, the department has taken steps to try to deal with the backlog. The oldest claims in the system were moved to the front of the line and claims processors were required to work at least 20 hours of overtime each month. That has helped to reduce the backlog to just over 531,000, the VA said Thursday.<\/p>\n

Among the claims cleared were about 65,000 cases that had been pending for longer than two years. About 2,000 such cases remain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, that little bit of mandatory overtime helped them clear up more than 100,000 claims – 65,000 of which were sitting for more than two years.<\/p>\n

I’m skeptical.<\/p>\n

It seems like the VA has just rubber-stamped all those claims – or denied them (because that clears them from the backlog as well), without any scrutiny – I wonder how much VA fraud we are going to be hearing about in the coming years …<\/p>\n

Additionally, if all those claims were able to be processed in such a short time, why were they sitting for years to begin with?<\/p>\n

Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, has a similar assessment of the VA’s sudden abilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny progress toward eliminating the backlog is welcome news. But we cannot forget that the department is still far short of its own backlog performance benchmarks for 2013.<\/p>\n

“Additionally, one can\u2019t help but question how the department was able to process most of its two-year-old claims in just 60 days. If two months was all VA needed to adjudicate these claims, why did the department let them sit for two years or longer? Furthermore, what will happen to the backlog once VA employees are taken off of mandatory overtime and returned to regular duties? Nevertheless,\u00a0when it comes to evaluating VA\u2019s success in combatting\u00a0the backlog, the two most important numbers are zero and 2015. In other words, this problem won\u2019t be solved unless the backlog is at zero by 2015, just as VA leaders have promised.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, he’s partially right, but it’s not all about zero by 2015 – the claims have to be done properly, the first time, and cases of fraud need to be identified and handled. If those two things aren’t done, then a backlog of zero is meaningless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The VA seems to be making some progress in recent weeks … from\u00a0Politico: The Veterans Affairs … VA making progress or scamming the numbers?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":630,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/630"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}