SHOCKER: Veterans Often Wait Over A Year For Benefits, Some Wait Up To 642 Days As VA Struggles To Handle Claims

 

The Department of Veterans Affairs is failing to keep up with a torrent of benefits claims, and the backlog leaves many service members high and dry for well over a year after first filing their forms, a new report from the Center for Investigative Reporting finds.

From the CIR report:

The agency tracks and widely reports the average wait time: 273 days. But the internal data indicates that veterans filing their first claim, including those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, wait nearly two months longer, between 316 and 327 days. Those filing for the first time in America’s major population centers wait up to twice as long -- 642 days in New York, 619 days in Los Angeles and 542 days in Chicago. 

The ranks of veterans waiting more than a year for their benefits grew from 11,000 in 2009, the first year of Obama’s presidency, to 245,000 in December -- an increase of more than 2,000 percent......... 

FULL ARTICLE: Veterans Often Wait Over A Year For Benefits, Some Wait Up To 642 Days As VA Struggles To Handle Claims