The VA still can’t get the basics down of tracking and deciding who gets health benefits.
Their 860,000 claim backlog is still nowhere close to being dealt with and now the Inspector General is reporting that more than 300,000 dead veterans are classified as still actively trying to sign up for VA health care.
[revad1]
This embarrassment is made worse in the report as VA workers threw out over 10,000 applications without proper review. Additionally 13% of those on the list have waited over FIVE YEARS!
Our veterans deserve so much better than this! Here is what the investigators had to say in the report:
“Overstated pending enrollment records create unnecessary difficulty and confusion in identifying and assisting veterans with the most urgent need for health care enrollment. Additionally, outreach efforts to obtain additional information for enrollment eligibility may have been frustrating and upsetting to family members of deceased veterans.”
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From the Washington Times:
More than 300,000 dead veterans are still listed as actively trying to sign up for health care at the Department of Veterans Affairs — part of a massive 860,000-claim backlog that the department still hasn’t been able to clear up, an inspector general said in a report Wednesday that described a department still struggling with the basics of tracking and deciding who should get benefits.
Veterans Affairs workers appear to have deleted another 10,000 benefit applications without ever even processing them, investigators said, potentially denying veterans care they deserved. And 13 percent of the names on the backlog have been waiting more than five years.
Read more at the Washington Times
