In 1999, a group of private companies, such as Kodak, Cisco,  IBM, and  Microsoft got together and developed a system for the VA to use to convert the VA paper claim system to electronic processing called “Highway 1” at no cost to the government.

Today, and every day, about 17,000 Veterans will be so frustrated they will call The VA’s national veterans suicide crisis line (800-273-8255).   And, every day, 18 of these Vets will  (or about 500 per month)  “fall through the cracks” and take their own life  according to the VA’s estimates.  That is, 18 more Vets get killed on the VA’s “Highway One” of benefits claims frustration”.

After more than 13 years of bad contracts, delays, and a million Veterans on a claims waiting list, the VA now promises to have the claims process online by 2015.  Its too late for guys like this, however.

By using “non VA math”, I estimate that another  19,000 Veterans will lose their life to their own hand while the VA takes ANOTHER 3 years to try to fix the broken system.

For those of you who like math, thats 365 days per year, times 3 years, times 18 Veterans per day, which is a little more than 19,000 Veterans to be killed on VA’s “Highway One” of benefit frustration while we are waiting to see if Shinseki’s  contractors, can, indeed, reduce the backlog, and achieve a 2% error rate.

We cant afford to give the VA another 3 years, and 19,000 more Vets lives to fix what should have been done in 1999.  Call your senator and tell him to “fix the VA now”, not in 2015.