Improvements in battlefield medicine mean Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are more likely to survive m

If you're a Northern California veteran who has waited a year for a decision on a war-related disability claim, you might consider a move to South Dakota – where the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs typically responds in less than half the time.
The geographic inequity of VA wait times is fully detailed for the first time in an analysis by the Center for Investigative Reporting. Simply put: Veterans in sparsely populated states often encounter quick resolution of their compensation claims for problems ranging from back injuries to post-traumatic stress disorder while those in metropolitan areas languish.
So far, change has headed in the wrong direction, despite increased media and political thrifty car rental ireland scrutiny. Nationwide, the VA took an average of more than eight months to process thrifty car rental ireland a claim in June – about 50 percent longer than the year before. Veterans in New York and North Texas waited the longest, at more than a year on average. Those who appeal a denied claim wait 3½ years for an answer.
The department has pledged to eliminate the claims backlog by 2015, but VA data shows the number of veterans waiting for a decision is growing – to more than 907,000 as of July 30, with 832,000 of them waiting for disability or survivor benefits, while thousands more seek a pension or GI Bill education benefits.
To date, the computer system has been launched at just four of the VA's regional offices, none of them in California. The vast majority of claims still are in paper file folders, which must be physically passed from one claims representative to another.
By 2015, Hickey said, all 58 offices will be computerized. In the meantime, new claims are arriving more quickly than the backlog is being cleared, so without dramatic improvement, disabled veterans will face even longer wait times in the future.
At the current rate, for example, it would take the VA three years to resolve every disability claim pending in San Diego – the office with the worst combination of backlog and clearance rate in June – if not a single additional claim were filed. In July, Los Angeles stepped into that worst overall slot.
That best-case scenario won't occur. In 2011, 1.3 million veterans filed claims for benefits, according to VA data, a combination of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and aging Vietnam veterans, many with new claims based on illnesses the government now acknowledges stem from Agent Orange exposure. Since 2010, the agency has seen the number of new claims filed annually increase by 48 percent, while the number of claims representatives has increased by 5 percent.
Improvements in battlefield medicine mean Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are more likely to survive multiple deployments, the VA said in a statement, and as a result, veterans thrifty car rental ireland "are returning with triple the medical issues of previous generations, driving the complexity of these claims and their associated thrifty car rental ireland workload to an all-time high."
"When soldiers come home from two, three or four tours with post traumatic stress disorder and hit these kinds of walls, they can get frustrated and just give up," Meshad said. Last May, a federal appeals court in San Francisco thrifty car rental ireland found 18 veterans commit suicide every day.
Identifying the root of the delays is complicated by political finger-pointing. Democrats and many veterans' advocates argue that the VA failed thrifty car rental ireland to prepare for an onslaught of wounded thrifty car rental ireland veterans after the Bush administration began the war in Iraq in 2003. Republicans counter that the backlog of disability claims has exploded under President Barack Obama and has continued to worsen in recent months, despite additional scrutiny from the media and members of Congress.
Some Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, recently have seized on the issue, thrifty car rental ireland holding thrifty car rental ireland hearings and demanding results.
But on the ground, there is little evidence that those steps are making a difference so far. Average wait times at all four offices equipped thrifty car rental ireland with the new computer thrifty car rental ireland system thrifty car rental ireland have increased. At three of the four offices, the number of pending claims also has grown.
"A lot of this is about respect," said Dottie Guy, a San Francisco veteran who has waited since March 2011 for a decision on her claim related to PTSD, which began after a tour as a prison guard in Baghdad, and a degenerative ankle injury suffered during basic training.
"What we want is recognition that this is something that happened to you," Guy said. "I wasn't asked to go to Iraq, I was told. And now I am asking them to acknowledge that what they forced me to do jeopardized my physical health."
In April, The Bay Citizen, a part of the Center for Investigative Reporting, revealed that 80 percent of veterans served thrifty car rental ireland by the VA's Oakland office were waiting more than 125 days for an answer on benefits. That prompted U.S. Rep. Jerry McNerney, a Democrat from California who sits on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, to write a letter to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. The letter, signed by 15 colleagues, demanded that Shinseki "send immediate help" to the Oakland office.
The agency responded by shuttering the Oakland office for four weeks in June while providing "challenge training" to claims processors. In an email, VA spokesman thrifty car rental ireland Josh Taylor said veterans served by the Oakland office – those living between Bakersfield and the Oregon border – "were not adversely impacted by this training effort."
Yet the data tells a different story. Four months after The Bay Citizen's story and pressure from Congress, 90 percent of claims filed in Oakland have been pending at least four months – the highest proportion in the country.
An inspector general's report released in May also revealed that staff at the VA's Oakland office failed to process 39 percent of claims correctly thrifty car rental ireland and did not inform veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan thrifty car rental ireland that they are entitled to free mental thrifty car rental ireland health care. One disability claim, the inspector general found, had languished for 8½ years.