Allow me to apologize to a large contingent of the Veterans Benefits Agency (VBA). I speak of the rank and file who handle our claims. They are represented by the AFGE, a union I am sure wants the best outcome for Vets.

As usual, the operational  disconnect often happens between the upper and lower management groups. The rank and file VA employees carrying the water on our claims develop them according to the dictates of the M 21-1MR. They are bound by this and cannot deviate from it. On paper, it looks like the real deal. In practice, the convoluted requirements disqualify almost all of us. This is what I have been working on for the last 5 years.

Often, you can feel your way around a dark room even without having entered it before. Certain precepts are a given. All bedrooms have a bed somewhere. Locate that and chances are you’ll find the nightstand close by. From there, the layout firms up in your mind. Filing a claim with the VA is similarly confounding. I have explored this phenomenon to its logical conclusion and written a book to help you navigate it. This website also updates and amplifies what we find. Filing a claim should not require a book. It shouldn’t require a detailed description of semantic punji pits to avoid, verbal trip wires that invoke automatic denials and mostly, it should be a non adversarial process as  advertised.

I get mail from AFGE members who implore me not to identify them. Some describe feelings almost akin to deep depression over their inability to help Veterans. Many are Veterans so the angst is even more genuine. For years I suspected that VA employees were indifferent to our plight. I made jokes about their apparent laziness or inability to accomplish some of the most mundane tasks. I remember the old VA of the 70’s. You could walk right in and sit down with the dude in charge of VA loans. You didn’t even need an appointment. They could figure it out (with paper files) in a heartbeat and have you on your way. What has changed is the upper management and the rulebook. Actually , it hasn’t changed. We did. We figured out this game. We now file claims whereas before we didn’t. Now there are too many of us storming the gates such that it endangers the financial viability of the system. All those upper management bonuses have to be paid.

No more is a simple claim “simple”. Everything has to go through India via snail mail. Twenty people have to get their mitts in it before you get the inevitable denial. After a long, protracted fight, you win but it shouldn’t have happened that way. AFGE members are aware of this. They cringe every time a new outfit arrives from the Central Office with some newly acronymed program designed to speed things up. At some point the acronyms sink the boat. This, in great measure, is what has happened. It was gradual and provoked by endless wars and their inevitable fallout-us. Too many of us.

Now, if you even doubted me or those poor souls mired in acronyms before now, I would like to set the record straight. As I mentioned above. I apologize. The apology extends to the rank and file, not the hierarchy who administer it. I urge you to read this AFGE web site in hopes you can understand the plight many of the VA employees find themselves in these days. They get to hear a steady drum roll of criticism about how inept and inefficient they are. Congress denigrates their efforts daily. Hell, VA upper management denigrates the rank and file and excoriates them for their inability to overcome the backlog-and then arrives with another laundry basket full of acronymed programs to institute. It reminds me of the hell officers put us through to accomplish our tasks.

I’m sure you’ve often heard the term “At some point one has to shoot the engineers and begin production”. That time has come. Moreover, the support long promised for all these asinine “improvements” , so long held back, is now an imperative. VA has been doing this since 1775 as well so one would think they’d be past masters of the art form.

With the roll out of the new VBMS and a paperless system, vast quantities of support are needed and there is none. The hardware to support it is non-existent and nowhere to be seen on the horizon yet the troops are expected to crank these claims out as if it were there. The article I wrote about the VBMS several days ago that encompassed the OIG’s findings was rather tame. The IG is loathe to throw rocks in their own house and ostracize their brethren over at the VBA . This is why their diatribes are laced with “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” and “We and the Under Secretary for Benefits concurred that…”  and “it was felt that with more training and communication, a higher level of accomplishment will ensue”.

I urge all of you who feel the urge to pick up large stones and throw them at VAROs to peruse this website and “see how the other half lives”. Look at it from their perspective. Many of these people take the same pride in their jobs that we all do. I’m sure they are less than enchanted about the way the M21 is written and how it always seems to find us on the wrong side of the fence. Anyone, and especially Vets, feel compassion toward their own because they are often aware of the trials and tribulations associated with military service. They are also well-acquainted with the acronym SNAFU. That is what we have in common. Their dilemma is in how to get us service connected without running afoul of a hierarchy bent on denying us at every turn. We, in turn, are thwarted by inept VSOs with the IQ of goats. I take that back. It unfairly impugns goats everywhere. Day to day management of the VA rating process falls on the shoulders of many in the lower GS categories. They take the brunt of the abuse when production figures aren’t met. Prior to mow, I blamed them all as one faceless bureaucracy. I stand corrected. It’s patently obvious where the problem lies.

Fellow Veterans heed this. There is much more here than meets the eye. The more AFGE members who contact me and express outrage, as well as feelings of remorse when they see us disenfranchised, convinces me we are in for a long, bumpy ride well past the promised milk and honey of 125 day/98%  land in 2015. Unless there is a major sea change in how the Orlando Vacation Planning Office does business, we (Vets) and rank and file AFGE workers who rate us are going to both suffer unending years of abuse.

Look at this website and read the correspondence which is being given lip service by the Central Office. Witness the true feelings of VA employees who are forbidden to show any empathy to you. As I pointed out, in the 70s a much different paradigm was employed. Employees had names. They had telephones and they answered them. They signed their names to documents you received. There was interplay. Sadly, all that is a thing of the past. Acronyms have put paid to that. At what point did computer programs become the enemy? When forty people-ahem-technicians-are involved in a decision-making process, the opportunity for finger pointing is vastly expanded. No one has an individually recognized work product. It is the amalgam of many. No error can attach to it. Add in haste to produce with an inept process and you can see why the error rate exceeds 60% with no accountability  If vehicles were coming off the line in Detroit with no transmissions or u joints, someone would be summoned and asked why.

Maybe it’s time to forge an alliance. After all, we are the sole reason VA raters have a job and they exist to serve us. At what point does it become necessary to cut the Gordian knot and solve the quandary of benefits dispersal? Red tape might have been an apt metaphor twenty years ago. Now it consists of Challenge training, VBMS, CORE, IDEAL, PIES, VIS, BIRLS and VID. Somewhere, I suspect there’s an M-2? manual that is devoted entirely to identifying all the abbreviations. None of this means anything when the employee finishes his /her training only to be told “Well, that’s all well and fine but we don’t do it that way here in Salt Lake. Only back east. Just keep doing what we tell you or you’ll get the boot.”