Punxsutawney Phil must have seen something I’m missing if he didn’t see his shadow. We’re expecting another one of these things called an “atmospheric river” this coming week. Who’s their writer for all this Snowmaggedon-type tripe? I actually liked the good old days when you took what you got in the weather department. If it dumped 2 feet of snow the night before, you woke up and dealt with it. The supermarket store shelves didn’t get ransacked like a San Francisco 7-11. Folks didn’t run down to the liquor store and clean out the entire supply of Tanqueray, limes and tonic water before I arrived. Hell, no. We were like Boy Scouts are nowadays. Pretty much prepared for any eventuality as long as there’s a nearby source to charge their phones. Our neighbors even put in a nuclear bomb shelter back then (1959). 

Fortunately for us all now, we can see what’s coming way ahead of time and those hordes of panicky doomsday hoarders have ample time to buy up a lifetime supply of bottled water. But enough about the Philster and his annual weather prognostication gig. Let’s talk about the fustercluck the VA has become in the last couple four years. I don’t frequently criticize the VA. But when I do, I drink single malt scotch as I write the email. I have to work with them and most of them know who I am. In fact, many read the blog. Most, but not all, are very pleasant to work with and bend over backwards to help me help my Vets. The operable word here is ‘most’.

Then there are the others who inhabit what they call the VSC or Veterans Service Center. VSC is synonymous with the VBA or Veterans Benefits Administration. The VSC is the nerve center of the ratings employees-or, in the governmental vernacular- GS 9 Examiner, Veterans Rating. This includes the DROCs (Decision Review Operations Centers) in St. Pete’s and Seattle. There’s a third one in DC but they fall under the direct purview of the OAR (Office of Administrative Review-formerly the AMC, ARC or the Black Hole)). For the most part, VBAWash397 does the repair work after the BVA judge makes a decision in your favor. If it’s a run of the mill denial, the local yokels across our fruited  Regional Office (RO) plains do the copy-and-paste. When all is done, they send it to Janesville Wisconsin for printing and mailing. That, fer sure, has it’s own acronym as well-the CMP or Central Mail Processing.

Assuming you’re not cross-eyed from the above, imagine a process like a Detroit assembly line for cars. Each person puts something onto the car as it travels down the line. Tires are affixed to the chassis and all the wiring harnesses and brakes/brake lines are connected. Next the body is attached and so on. A half a mile or so later on, the completed product rolls off the line and is ready for the road. Now imagine a VA assembly line five miles long and growing longer by the month. Imagine it moving along briskly at three feet a week. VSC’s motto? So much coffee. So little time.

Back in the olden days before they “invented” the AMA system, one (1, uno, nung) rater, usually a Veteran himself, would check out your file and take it back to his desk for a month or so. He ate, slept, bathed and pottied with your claim until it was complete. To be sure, when completed, he would take it to his supervisor for a review to ensure quality control. If everything passed muster, the secretary pushed print, licked the stamp and envelope and threw it into the outgoing mail. A week or so later, you’d read about your Zeros for Heroes award and how you were now entitled to free hearing aids for life. The blown out knees from jumping out of perfectly airworthy $1.19s and 123s would take another decade or two to win and you would then start getting a compensation check.

Along about 2012, it was decided that working with paper was right out and VA must enter the 21st century of computers. The idea was to streamline the process and make it so easy a caveman could do it. In fact, it’s rumored that’s where Geico™ came up with the idea for their killer commercial. A Neanderthal VA employee quit and went to work for them.  Now, with little effort,  VA’s finest could assemble all the Vet’s parameters, feed it into their newly computerized M 21 Magic Eight Ball and obtain a rating in minutes instead of years. What could possibly go wrong?

After a few years, the system’s bugs were cured and we had a quasi-workable Legacy procedure with an accuracy rate of about 25% on a good day. No longer were records lost or  misplaced. Everything was available at a moment’s notice and efficiency was the operable word. About then, the bean counters entered (again) and began tampering with it. Who, pray tell, was in charge of Quality Control? No one? Why, then, we need a QC officer- or what the hell. How about a complete office full of QC Officer experts?

At some point, back in the darker ages, the Poohbahs had already figured some employees were slackers and might cheat at this so everything required a signature or two for dispersal of funds. Over time, they even decided if it went over $125 K, it would require three signatures. Since that was rarer than unicorn poop, it didn’t happen frequently. As VA became more efficient with their computers, they discovered a bunch of errors they had committed over the previous decades. Fortunately, most of the Veterans had died so they were off the hook for those. But some were still alive so they began to scheme on how to give these really big awards a haircut to protect their integrity and their Christmas bonus checks. Face it. It’s a dang hard sell to ask for proficiency awards when your error rate is running 75%.

The employees became lazy at some point and discovered the new shredder rooms didn’t have cameras or anything to dissuade them from getting rid of their file backlogs. Thousands of Vets’ claims turned into hamster bedding until they got smart and put a lock on the door like fast food restrooms. You had to go get the key and sign the log book. Needless to say, the error rate once again began to climb. Naturally, they had to hire someone to sign off on what you were hoping to shred, too. More signatures. More employees. VA began to metastasize like a non-small cell carcinoma and it’s never stopped since.

 

The good news-and there always is some at VA- was that they effectively eliminated the danger of anyone getting writer’s cramp or carpal tunnel syndrome from having to spend all day applying their John Hancock on all the paperwork. With the advent of the computers, it required a simple keystroke. Some bright soul even suggested VA could save even more money by getting rid of pencils and pens soon. More signatures were needed for all these changes, but now, with their new computers, this was a breeze. They even put in their own IT department to fix all their misbehaving computers.

And then along came the AMA. On its heels almost immediately came the Procopio decision and with it the Agent Orange presumption for all those Squids who were working on their tans out in the South China Sea. And before you could say Jack Robinson, the PACT Act was passed. All these new entitlements required even more QC and signatures. By now, with inflation and COLA increases, a $125K retro payment for a screwup was a low ball award. Think $250 K for a CUE boner back to 1950. Remember Leroy MacKlem back in 2008? Here’s the story I wrote up about him. Somehow he found out about my article and even emailed me to thank me for telling other Veterans about his ‘haircut’. I called him up and we had a good laugh. He  passed away in 2014 but his story will live on. At least he got to buy his dream Cadillac-one of those old 1970 Fleetwoods that’s longer than my garage is deep.

 

So, here Veterans still sit ten years later with an intractable backlog that defies the imagination. VA continues to insist this is still a 125-day process and very few, if any, take much longer than six months at the outside. Of course they’ve been repeating that lie that since the inception of computers back in 2014. I expect it’s true if you measuring your claim duration in days on Venus. But what the hey? If you live on Mercury, it only takes five days.

VA swore every which way to Sunday that AMA was guaranteed to erase the backlog at the Board of Veterans Appeals (BVA). But again, some unscrupulous, spiteful employees, bereft of their precious shredder rooms, were now denying virtually everything that came across their desks. So naturally most of  their work moved up the chain to the BVA on appeal. The poor overworked VA staff attorneys were rapidly overwhelmed as the backlog began to pile up there. Feeling picked on, the staff attorneys, with VLJs’ blessings, began remanding (regurgitating?) all the crap right back down to the VSCs and stamping “You forgot to _____________.” on them. All this did was redistribute the backlog out more evenly like spreading frosting on a cake. And give birth to more signatures. And yet even more VA employees.

And so here we are. All these perennial promises ring hollow for Veterans who are homeless, poor, and severely disabled. Is it fair to build two more miles of tunnel onto a very long claims tunnel? Is it fair to add so many workers into the chain just to ensure quality control when you’re sporting a 75% error rate with a process that requires about 500 signatures already? I look at my 2011 claim for my greenhouse and figure they have more than $2 million invested in saying “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand, sonny?”

I remember those olden days fondly. At least if you got a denial at your local Fort Fumble, you could get it up to the BVA, have a hearing (face to face) with three VLJs and be done in 18 months from start to finish. With only one rater at the local level, his comprehension of your predicament was total. You could actually go down to the RO and ask to see him to argue about why no one went and got your records-or if they did, why didn’t anyone read them?

Trying to reach anyone at the RO these days is dicey. With all the modern communications gear, you’d think this would really be a snap. I email VSC folks and never hear back.  The only way I get any traction is when I email the VA Secretary himself. I reckon they must be too busy Quality Controlling, keystroking their signatures and sipping Starbucks™. And to think computers were supposed to fix all this. Shoot. I’m still waiting for the Drive Thru windows they promised us to be installed. You know the one where they say “Please pull forward to the next window. Your claim is being prepared and checked for accuracy. It should be ready in a few minutes, sir.”

 

I think what really gets my goat is I won’t be alive in 2174 when the VA Secretary finally announces on X (formerly known as Prince) that the backlog has almost been eliminated and the average processing time has shrunken remarkably to a mere 125 days… or less.

And that’s all I have to say about that.