Every November, Veterans issues receive far more attention than they do at any other time of the year, and this Veterans Day was no exception. Politicians, VA officials, and other stakeholders all did their duty to remind Americans that veterans deserve our respect and admiration for their sacrifice.
However, given the plethora of challenges still impacting the U.S Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), it is important to remind society that veterans deserve this same level of respect and admiration year-round.
{mosads}Although most of the attention has centered around veterans’ prompt access to VA care, it is often overlooked that access to care typically requires that a veteran first receive a VA service-connected disability rating.
Last week, VA Secretary David Shulkin called for a new Veterans Benefits Advisory Board, acknowledging that VA’s benefits procedures are “far too complex, filled with too much bureaucracy” and is often adversarial to veterans. This is a welcome step in the right direction.
However, Shulkin did not specify whether the new Advisory Board would encompass VA’s claim appeals process, which was also the recent subject of reform legislation signed by President Trump in August.
For veterans to truly benefit from any analysis of VA’s benefits system, claim appeals must be included because, already, there are signs that VA’s new process is not being used as Congress intended.
Specifically, as has been already noted by several stakeholders, including veterans service organizations (VSOs), advocates, and other stakeholders, VA has hastily attempted to roll out its Rapid Appeals Modernization Program (RAMP) this month, without properly considering how these changes will impact veterans pressured by VA to participate in the new program.
Appeals modernization was the product of intense collaboration with stakeholders and was built upon a fundamental bargain: VA would dramatically improve its decisions denying benefits. That means VA would specifically identify what facts had not been proven by the veteran and what evidence was considered by VA. In exchange, veterans and their advocates would accept the responsibility of navigating which type of review was best for their claim.
RAMP is not appeals modernization as it was designed. Instead, RAMP denies veterans the benefit of the reform bargain Congress passed because VA asks veterans to choose a review option in the new system without being given the information required to make a knowing and intelligent decision about whether to file a supplemental claim, seek local review, or appeal to a judge in Washington, D.C.
Not only will veterans waste time, but RAMP is not truly a pilot for VA because the files of legacy appeals look nothing like the future claims properly developed for the new system. Therefore, VA doesn’t learn what choices veterans will make with proper information and doesn’t learn what its workload will be like in the new framework.
In other words, RAMP allows VA to take that appeal — and how long that veteran has been waiting for a decision — off its books. Similar to the VA patient-wait time scandal, RAMP gives VA the ability to manipulate its wait-time information, without actually providing any tangible benefits, such as a disability compensation and access to health care, to the veteran.
Since the nation’s founding, the veterans benefits process has been characterized as non-adversarial and pro-claimant. Although Shulkin conceded in his Veterans Benefits Advisory Board remarks that the system is often adversarial toward veterans, VA’s RAMP program perpetuates, rather than alleviates, this problem. The result is that RAMP is a shell game because it prioritizes making VA’s numbers look better over properly reviewing denied claims.
In VA’s haste to eliminate its existing claim appeals backlog, RAMP encourages veterans to withdraw their current appeal by opting into the new program. Although opting into RAMP sounds advantageous to the veteran, without clear procedures in place and full information, the veteran has no guarantee of a faster, higher quality decision. If a veteran gets a bad decision from VA, then the veteran does not have the ability to opt back into the existing system.
Although VA’s justifications for these procedures involve providing veterans with a faster decision on a pending appeal, speed should not come at the expense of important due process procedures. In addition, several VSOs and stakeholders that initially supported the appeals reform process have publicly come forward outlining the above-concerns with RAMP, as well as their frustrations with being excluded from VA’s implementation.
RAMP not only violates VA’s obligations to veterans, but it also betrays the trust of Congress. While appeals modernization was being negotiated, VA stated that it could not move legacy appeals into the new system because VA would have to re-adjudicate them and provide a proper notice. VA also promised to work closely with VSOs, Congress and other stakeholders on implementation and keep them informed. VA violated both of these promises with RAMP.
Accordingly, if VA’s appeals process is truly to be reformed, Congress and other stakeholders cannot walk away from their oversight responsibility simply because legislation was passed. Congress must take its oversight process of the implementation seriously, and, the VA must continue to listen to the concerns of VSOs and attorneys who represent veterans in appealed claims.
Half a million veterans who were denied benefits are waiting for VA to resolve their appeals, not reset how long they’ve been waiting so VA can falsely declare victory.
Congress needs to ask VA to explain when it will fully and properly implement the legislation and when the hundreds of thousands of veterans waiting on appeals will get a real resolution. VA can show that they are serious about truly reforming the appeals process by including it in the Veterans Benefits Advisory Board’s jurisdiction.
Finally, the rest of us can keep the pressure on the VA and our elected representatives by continuing to support our nation’s heroes on Veterans Day and all year.
Rory E. Riley-Topping has dedicated her career to ensuring accountability within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to care for our nation’s veterans. She is the principal at Riley-Topping Consulting and has served in a legal capacity for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, the National Veterans Legal Services Program, the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and can be reached on Twitter @RileyTopping.