6 The Hampton Roads Messenger


Volume 7 Number 1


Veteran Wait Times for Benefits Decisions Vary by Location


BY AARON GLANTZ 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.


Returning home from Afghanistan to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or Atlanta? Veterans who live in Lincoln, Neb., and Fargo, N.D., get their benefits faster.


Dottie Guy, 30, of San Francisco has been waiting since March 2011 for a decision on her claim related for post-traumatic stress disorder and an ankle injury.


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.


In California, veterans who file


claims with any of the VA’s three regional offices – in Oakland, Los Angeles and San Diego – wait more than nine months on average.


“It’s a slap in the face,” said Adam


Fields, a former Marine from Modesto, who has been waiting since November 2010 for a ruling on his claim for benefits for traumatic brain injury.


During his two tours in Iraq,


Fields said he survived multiple vehicle rollovers and sustained three concussions, which have contributed to persistent short-term memory loss.


“Sometimes I get in the car, and I


forget where I’m going,” said Fields, who supports his wife and 5-year-old son by driving a scrap metal truck in Stockton, two hours from the closest VA hospital.


“If the VA approved my claim,


I could afford to take time off to get regular treatment,” he said.


The Bay Citizen’s city-by-city data


populates an online interactive map that will automatically update weekly, documenting in real time the progress of recent VA promises to improve.


So far, change has headed in the


wrong direction, despite increased media and political scrutiny. Nationwide, the VA took an average of more than eight months to process 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.


Why the dramatic differences? A VA spokesman did not respond to numerous email and telephone inquiries seeking an explanation.


Delays have increased despite a


new $300 million computer system and 3,300 claims processors hired since 2010 – 765 of them for additional positions.


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.


“If you have ever walked into one


of our regional offices, you would see stacks and stacks of paper,” Allison Hickey, the agency’s undersecretary for benefits, told reporters July 11.


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 – if not a single additional claim were filed.


That 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 “are returning with triple the medical issues of previous generations, driving the complexity of these claims and their associated workload to an all-time high.”


Veterans’ advocates say that makes


the growing VA delays even more disturbing.


“We’re seeing people break and


snap like we’ve never seen before,” said Shad Meshad, a Vietnam veteran and former combat medic who heads up the Los Angeles-based National Veterans Foundation.


“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 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 to prepare for an onslaught of wounded 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, holding hearings and demanding results.


In response, VA officials have said they are about to turn things around.


“We are already implementing Life Long Homes FROM PAGE 3


we did with creating more energy-effi- cient homes.


This could involve certifying


a package of age-related home improvements -- the kinds of things we did for my parents -- and coming up with public and private strategies for financial support.


Second, we ought to be thinking


about how we accessorize communities for an aging population. Today, we build parks for children. Imagine a park where older people would have stations for exercise. Think about age- appropriate recreation facilities. Think about how we make transit available, so people who no longer drive can get to the doctor.


As we build new communities we


should focus on walkability -- making sure that older people can walk to facilities they need, like groceries and pharmacies.


Q. Can you point to examples? H.C.: There are communities that


are now rethinking zoning policies so that granny flats can be built on the same lots as larger size homes. Davis, Calif., has rethought its zoning codes with that in mind.


There are places using the high


school library as the community library. So, elderly people can work there or volunteer there and interface with the next generation.


I think we’ll be recycling older


communities in many parts of the U.S. -- clearing away obsolete buildings and reconfiguring them as elderly housing. The recession has created a lot of sites that are no longer economically viable. Strip centers, even regional malls are being remade with housing for the elderly in mind.


We also need to generate prototypes


for new age appropriate homes for people who are leaving McMansions and looking for a smaller home.


Q. What about affordable


housing? H.C.: We need to double down


on very successful programs that have produced affordable housing for


September 2012


our plan and are getting good early results,” Hickey told a House oversight subcommittee July 18.


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 with the new computer system have increased. At two of the four offices, the number of pending claims also has grown.


In Indianapolis, which has the new


system, the average wait time now is 361 days, and nearly 20,000 veterans are waiting.


“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.”


VETERAN WAIT TIMES 13


the elderly. Low-income housing tax credits -- we need more. And HUD’s Section 202 (supportive housing for the elderly) program -- we need more of that. In some respects, this is the least problematic area because we know what to do -- we just need to do more of it.


What we don’t know how to


do very well is help people who are middle-class, but who are about to fall off the dual cliff of aging and frailty while living on fixed incomes and aging in place.


Q. Yet, this is an era of budget


cuts. How do you make the case for more financial assistance for programs of this kind?


H.C.: As a country, we owe it to


our seniors. It’s the right thing to do. It is unacceptable to leave a large segment of the population on their own at the most frail time of their lives. I also think we can make the case that cost savings can be achieved by keeping people living independently as long as possible instead of going to assisted- living or nursing home facilities.


Q. What about the suburbs? H.C.: The baby boomers are the


first American suburban generation. But the suburbs are the worst place to age because they’re so unwalkable and totally dependent on the automobile. Living in a cul de sac is really hard when you lose access to your car. So these communities have to think of new strategies.


Q. One of the authors in your book


writes about his personal longevity plan. Do you have one?


H.C.: I turned 65 this year and


I do have a plan that involves daily exercise and fitness. My personal role models are people who don’t think about retirement but have created either businesses or activities that will allow them to be active until the very end.


I will always be based in San


Antonio. I live in my grandfather’s old house, which I refurbished, one mile away from where I grew up and one block away from our neighborhood church. When you give this much to a place it becomes part of you and there are a lot of things you don’t want to abandon.


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