For more than a year, the COVID-related lockdown has destroyed small businesses, hit the working class and hindered student education.And now, facing the new Taliban The offensive, the Afghan government has collapsed, and after our veterans have sacrificed so much to support it in the past 20 years, the Taliban have been able to retake the country.
It was a 1-2 punch that hurt our veterans more than most people realize.
In particular, claims for disability benefits have surged. Thanks in large part to the terrible combination of the COVID closure and the war in Afghanistan, Federal records show 583,904 claims for disability compensation and benefits are currently awaiting the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). What is disturbing is that 185,600 of these claims are considered to be backlogs, which means that they have not taken action for more than 125 days, exceeding the statistics before COVID. Veterans are left behind, and the necessary reforms to the existing flawed system must put them first.
How did this happen? Virginia is one of the largest and most complex institutions in the U.S. government. Employs more than 412,000 people. A key VA subcomponent, Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Is the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States, supervising 1,293 healthcare facilities, including 171 VA medical centers and 1,112 outpatient clinics. Unfortunately, despite the vast resources available, Virginia has not always been able to meet the expectations of veterans.
In 2014, Virginia suffered a major scandal. Officials falsified records of a Phoenix medical center to conceal the time that veterans waited for medical appointments.Approximately 1,700 veterans It is reported to have been waiting “secretly” Listed, the average scheduling time for an initial primary care appointment is 115 days. It took years of congressional participation, strict media censorship, and the hard work of Virginia staff to overcome these problems.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hits with the lockdown. Most of the work of the National Personnel Records Center of the National Archives and Records Administration is temporarily suspended, and the team helps with disability claims for veterans.Ninety percent According to reports, the staff has been sent home. Government workers lag far behind in handling claims from veterans, many of whom suddenly lost their jobs due to the lockdown. The backlog of disability claims has tripled. More than a year later, Virginia has not completely crawled out of this hole.
And the situation may get worse. Starting with such a deficit, any large number of additional new claims, or bureaucratic changes that slow the processing of claims, may put further pressure on the system.
New claims can and will come from various sources, such as Toxic burn pit In Afghanistan and Iraq.In addition, the legislation coming into force in 2020 Is expecting Lead to new disability claims related to the exposure of Agent Orange or Blue Water Navy herbicides in the Vietnam era.
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With this in mind, Congress Any proposal that would inadvertently increase the existing bureaucratic backlog must be carefully reviewed.
At present, veterans can file claims in four ways: veterans service organizations mainly composed of volunteers, accredited lawyers engaged in fee-based service models, private consulting agents working on an emergency basis, and veterans themselves lodge claims. Any well-intentioned reform attempt to eliminate or limit these options will risk damaging veterans by restricting veterans’ choices, adding more red tape, and further backlogging the system.
The upcoming 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack on September 11 has made the scope of the issues involved become clear. This year is both the end and the beginning.
On the one hand, the war of a generation is ending. Despite the efforts of the Republican and Democratic governments for many years, the Afghan government has been overthrown and the US military has withdrawn. at the same time, Congress is debating By repealing the 2002 authorization to use military force (AUMF), “the public and official end of the Iraq war”. Although our veterans can be proud of their efforts to prevent more major terrorist attacks in two decades, we have clearly reached the end of an era.
On the other hand, our collective responsibility to the new generation of veterans has just begun. Twenty years of war produced the largest number of veterans since the Vietnam era, and put additional pressure on the already tense system of veterans affairs.
Our veterans should have a system that is easy to access, easy to navigate, and offers multiple options to enable them to achieve the best results. This is the least we can do to thank them for their services and enable them to reach the level of disability that they qualify for medically, legally, and morally.Only in this way can we enable VA to be able to properly mission accomplished “Take care of the person who will endure this battle.”
Matthew Kenney visited the Pentagon twice to perform the duties of the chief deputy assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs and the speech team of the secretary of defense. He is the former research director of the Senate Majority Leader’s Office.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author.
