There are so many issues facing the American people today and it seems like everyone wants to weaponize each and every one of these issues to beat their chest and declare their party is handling the issues perfectly and everything is to blame on the other party. In fact, although I live in America and focus on American politics,
I shouldn’t say the American people, I should say people of the Western World, but in this particular case, it is an American issue.
I saw this post on Twitter yesterday:
All the LYING by democrats about the VA not being able to provide services due to staffing cuts just got proven to be, well, lies.
In FY 2024, the VA processed a total of 2,517,519 ratings claims.
In FY 2025, so far, the VA has processed a total of 2,524,115 ratings claims. With two months to go.
The backlog of Veterans waiting for VA benefits has dropped by more than 37%, after rising 24% during the Biden Administration.
George aka Rat_BoyGL is talking about one side of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and is trying to celebrate the success of processing claims and applying those successes to the level of medical care the VA is providing. For those that aren’t familiar with the American VA, it is divided into two main branches:
Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA)
- Approves benefits and processes claims.
- Administers programs that provide financial and other assistance to veterans, dependents, and survivors.
- Mission: Deliver benefits and services promptly and compassionately in recognition of veterans’ service.
Programs include:
- Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (VR&E): Helps veterans with service-connected disabilities find and maintain work, or live independently if unable to work.
- Compensation and Pension (C&P): Direct payments based on service-connected disabilities or financial need.
- Education Programs: Support for higher education and vocational training (e.g., GI Bill).
- Insurance Programs: Life insurance at standard rates for veterans exposed to service hazards.
- Loan Guaranty: Enables veterans, certain spouses, and service members to purchase and retain homes.
Role is administrative and financial, not medical.
Veterans Health Administration (VHA)
- Provides direct health care services to veterans and their families.
- Mission: Honor veterans by providing exceptional health care and support.
- Operates:
- 150 Medical Centers.
- Nearly 1,400 community-based outpatient clinics.
- Largest integrated health care system in the U.S., serving over 8.3 million veterans annually.
- Services include: Routine checkups, specialty care, mental health services, and more.
When VBA and VHA Overlap
Overlap occurs mainly during Compensation and Pension (C&P) exams.
- C&P Exam Request: A veteran files a disability claim with the VBA.
- Scheduling: VBA schedules the exam, often at a VA Medical Center (VAMC) run by the VHA.
- Results Transfer: VHA conducts the exam and sends results to VBA for evaluation
Now to be accurate, there is a third branch, the National Cemetery Administration (NCA) but this one doesn’t factor into today’s discussion.
Now, I do not blame anyone for confusing the VBA with the VHA, because this is as complicated of an issue as Social Security is when people confuse Social Security (age based retirement) with Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) which is paid by the Social Security payroll taxes and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) which is a needs-based program for people with limited resources but is paid for by the general tax revenues, not the Social Security payroll taxes. With that said, I would hope that a United States Marine Corps (USMC) veteran would have known better.
The Democrats have in fact failed the Veterans. The Republicans have also failed the Veterans.
Both political parties in America share equal blame for the failing state of VA Health Care.
Any improvement by the VBA side of the house to speed up processing is amazing and deserves to be celebrated. Except when you consider that although the VA will clear out the backlog of disability claims by 74,000, it is still taking 131.8 days on average to process a claim. To make matters worse the VA has a target goal of 125 days to process a claim vs Social Security that has a goal of 37 or 43 days depending on the claim type.
The facts are clear, while credit can and should be given for clearing out the backlog, I think either party breaking their arm patting themselves on the back for getting the average down to 131.8 days is absurd.
Why is it taking 131.8 days? If you refer back to where I talked about where the VBA and the VHA overlap, if you cannot get the claimant into the medical exam side of the house quickly because the VHA isn’t able to provide timely medical services (which is the original claim that started this discussion) that is a problem.
Why is the length of time a claim takes to process such a sticking point and not worthy of celebrating? We currently have 32,882 veterans who are homeless, many of whom are trapped in a system because they have no permanent address. They struggle to obtain benefits, but they have no permanent address because they can’t obtain their benefits.
Let’s keep the stage clear: Good job on clearing out the backlog. Good job on shaving 10 days off the processing time. Now get back to work because more is needed and eventually get the VA goal in alignment with social security.
Over the last ten years we have seen massive improvements for veterans, including in the majority of cases having their VA rating before they leave the service. Processing claims quicker (and hopefully with higher rates of accuracy) is important, and I’m all about the current administration celebrating the win that they have processed more claims this fiscal year than last year and they have about 5 weeks to go and will surpass the previous record number of completed claims by 14%. Who cares though, the VBA improving has zero impact on the effectiveness of medical care provided by the VA. Why? Medical care is provided by the VHA.
Depending on what you Google, how you ask Chat GPT, or who you believe, you will find numbers all over the place, and given that I’m not the Government Accountability Office (GAO) or the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) I’m not going to try to win you over with facts and figures for accuracy. Instead, I will just provide a few, which will probably swing your head back and forth like a pendulum. The VA currently employs approximately 26,000 physicians with approximately 1,106 vacancies posted on their job site as of this morning, which would mean they have a 95.7% fill rate for physicians. Except, the VA is reporting a 14% vacancy rate, so that would mean there are 4,233 vacancies, which would mean roughly 1 in 7 VA physician positions are unfilled.
They have 4,233 positions available, but only 1,106 positions listed on the website? Maybe some of those postings are hiring multiple positions, or maybe they don’t have hiring authority yet for the other positions. As outsiders we cannot know. What we do know is that approximately 94% of VA facilities report a shortage for a medical officer (doctor) and 79% are reporting a shortage for nurses. What this translates to is an inability to properly provide medical services to the Veterans for whom they are responsible.
The VA being in terrible shape is no surprise, in fact, on 6 June 2018 after passing Congress with bi-partisan support, President Donald Trump signed into law the VA Mission Act. This act expanded Veteran access to private-sector health care, specifically if the wait time for primary or mental care at a VA facility is more than 20 days, or specialty care is more than 28 days, a veteran can go to a community provider, which as long as they use an in-network provider from the Community Care Network (CCN) 100% of the bill is covered.
On paper, this is amazing; however, it doesn’t fix any problems it just shifts problems around. Many data searches will reveal that the VA is able to provide services to veterans on par, or sometimes even faster, with the wait times from the civilian world. Obviously they would be able to do this when they are able to send their overflow into the civilian market. Also shifting veterans back and forth into the CCN can and does provide disruptions to continuity of care.
The most recent data is that we have indicates we are still losing on average 17 US Veterans a day due to suicide. Even though the VA mission act was bi-partisan and heralded as a success, it didn’t actually get Veterans better mental care, it just said they can try to get their own, if the wait is more than 20 days, which by the way, they will still try to schedule you and then 19 days later they will re-schedule you to try to keep you trapped in the failing VA system.
The biggest problem here is that both sides are trying to weaponize the VA and use their success and the failures of the other side as political currency, but it is the veteran who gets trapped in the middle desperate for help. If the Republican Party and MAGA Republicans want to take credit for these vast improvements to the VBA, I’m more than willing to tip my hat and raise a glass and say good job and well done. If those same individuals want to discount and discredit Democrat concerns for VHA care availability and use VBA stats and figure to support improvement, then we have no course but to meet in the center of a ring and have the fight.
If we are going to waste all this energy fighting, why can’t we apply that energy to fixing the problem instead.