Meet the new, improved M21-1MR WARMS Computer. I bet that all this time you thought  there were little munchkins running to and fro down at the RO with C-files balanced on their heads. Busy, busy, busy. Or not. What is the M-21 1MR? It is merely the operating manual for 38 CFR. 38 CFR, in turn, is the VASEC’s interpretation, on any given day, of what it was that Congress was trying to ensure we received via 38 USCS. The M-21 is not law; it has no force of law. It merely tells raters what to do if A=B and B=C. Since the M 21 always tells us that A≠B and B≠C, we lose and get a really spiffy letter telling us so that is also suitable for framing.

Let’s take a closer look at this process. Yes, you’ve sent everything in paper format or put it all on a disc and VONAPPed it in. Whichever method you used, its immaterial. All this gets the once over on it way to the maw of the M-21 Brushhog. What exits the back end is bagged up like mulch and heads for the signature room. There it’s signed off on with two sigs and whoosh out the door. If you win, its the same  scenario unless the award goes over $25K and then it needs the Veterans Service Center Manager’s signature which oddly resembles the handwriting of the Director of C&P back in DC. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

The point here is that there is not the hands-on process that everyone imagines. If that were so, how do we explain that the M-21 “accidentally” had a glitch and spit out a denial for HCV in Houston last fall based on STDs being willful misconduct and not LOD? This is just one we know of. How many more are there day in and day out? And how many are appealed?

Go one step further and look at the Sellers decision  several weeks ago. Three sigs and whoosh out the door. Then a “Standby. Houston we have a problem”. Better yet. Go back to the Macklem debacle last year. That’s proof positive that they’re brain dead or incapable of doing long division without a calculator.

Three decisions that we know of with glaring third grade errors. All three had the same problem. No one in their right mind would have signed them if they’d read them. Yet they did and thus it became a finding. A finding, for all of you who are new to this, is a “holding” judicially speaking that cannot be rescinded unless it is proved that it is the product of CUE (clear and unmistakable error).

CUE, as we know, is one of the hardest things in the world to overcome. It’s described as an outcome-determinative error- i.e. unless you can prove differently, then the decision stands. This is what happened with WGM. With Sellers, they got the three sigs but it prematurely escaped the RO like Pandora out of the box and they never could coax it back.   They weren’t finished “fixing it” yet. If this isn’t proof of the perfidy afoot at the vA, I don’t know that you could ever find better.  The Vet is approved but then it needs a “haircut” to mitigate the loss.

If no one is actually hands on in this process anymore, who is pulling the Oz levers? Someone has to insert the facts as they are known. The parameters are set and the little boxes are checked. The form populates and the info goes where it is aimed. Somewhere in the maze there is a glich and whoosh-out comes the wrong size of mulch. Nobody looks to see what the status is. It is what it is. Most importantly, it’s correct. It has to be, right? HAL 9000 says the AE-35 unit is due to fail and you trust it. Why wouldn’t you?

It’s evident this is why you can have a 60% error rate in this business and not even blink an eye. The implicit trust vA puts in computers to compute properly is legend. Why question why? Just do. This may be why vA employees in South Carolina are up in arms. They’re getting a bum rap and it’s WARMS’ fault.

If all this is being done via the WARMS M-21 wunderfunktion, do we really have a backlog in the conventional sense? It seems we don’t need more raters but munchkins to feed the in-basket hopper with data. Unfortunately, that will not result in more and better ratings. It will engender a new excuse protocol based on the “We need a new computer” scenario. Every time they revamp the technology, there’s that magic moment when the resident vA IT whiz kid says “Whoa! This  won’t interface with our existing system! We need to retool with the new HAL 9900. Then it’ll be all better. We could have that up and running by 2019 with 85 day/99% accuracy. Trust me.”

If I were a congressman , I think I’d go at it like Filner but with no quarter given or taken. Just a straight forward “Get it done. Now. Right? No more 2015, no more 98%, no more 4,000 more employees- no sir.” Excuses are like assholes and vA has learned the art form of how to present an asshole in the best light. Meet Mr. and Mrs. Vet(the assholes). We are the problem, ladies and gentlemen. If we’d give it a rest, they wouldn’t have this problem.