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Benicia Herald -- Thompson eyes $10M to ease VA benefits backlog

May 9, 2014
News Articles

By Donna Beth Weilenman

"No one who has served our country in uniform should have to wait, in some cases more than a year, for the benefits they've earned because the VA (Veterans Affairs) is backlogged," U.S. Representative Mike Thompson said in a recent news release.

In response to that backlog, Thompson, a Napa Democrat and Benicia's representative in the House, has co-written a bipartisan amendment that would earmark $10 million more to programs to help military veterans.

Thompson said new claims submitted by veterans can take nearly 300 days to process, which means they must wait for health care and benefits.

In fact, he said, the VA's Oakland Regional Office, which handles many of the claims for veterans living in Thompson's district, has an average backlog of 385 days.

Reports of the death of at least 40 veterans waiting for care at the Phoenix, Ariz., Veterans Affairs health care system that later attempted to conceal delays through secret lists have prompted some members of Congress to seek an investigation as well as ask for VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign.

Leaders of the American Legion, the country's largest veterans group, and others have called for Shinseki to quit. Saying that preventable deaths keep mounting but no VA manager has been held accountable, Daniel Dellinger, national commander of the American Legion, said, "We're going to find out what happened in Phoenix."

Speaker of the House John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, has indicated the problem is even bigger, saying there is a "systemic management issue that has occurred throughout the VA that needs to be addressed."

Unlike some colleagues, Boehner is not calling for Shinseki to step down, saying that wouldn't produce "the solutions that many of us are looking for."

Shinseki has vowed to stay at the VA helm. "All of this makes me angry," he said. Promising he would "make things better," he added, "I take every one of these incidents and allegations seriously, and we're going to go and investigate."

Two years before the Arizona deaths were reported, Nicholas Tolentino, a former mental health administrator at the Manchester, N.H., VA Center, said VA hospital managers had been looking for ways to skirt performance requirements, especially since those numbers were tired to bonuses.

Similar accusations have surfaced elsewhere over the past five years, and Oakland's office has been identified as one of the most troubled centers. One veteran has claimed it took him five years to get a claim completed.

At one time, the average wait time to complete a claim in Oakland exceeded 600 days.

The bipartisan amendment Thompson helped introduce would address the claims backlog by modifying House of Representatives Bill 4486, the 2015 Military Construction/Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, and earmarking an additional $10 million for that purpose.

Joining Thompson in authoring the amendment are four other members of the House California delegation, Democrats Jim Costa (Fresno) and Alan Lowenthal (Long Beach) and Republicans Doug LaMalfa (Oroville) and Jeff Denham (Modesto).

The amendment passed the House as part of HR 4486 and has been sent to the Senate for approval.

Issues:Veterans