Cleveland Heights Veterans Face Long Wait For VA Benefits

Ohio's veterans are now facing a new enemy at home — long wait times for their disability claims.

The waiting times started increasing in 2010 when U.S. troops were withdrawn from Iraq causing a dramatic uptick in first-time filers, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.

The data found that in most regional VA offices, not only did waiting times increase, but they vary dramatically with location: about a year and five months in Baltimore, Maryland compared to four months in Fargo, North Dakota. 

The national average now stands at about eleven months, which is dramatically higher than in 2009 when it was four months.

Cleveland's regional office, located on East Ninth Street, has an average wait-time for benefits of 400 days. That's double what it was in April 2011, and four times what it was in October 2010.The backlog has also partly been blamed on the VA still using paper to process their claims. 

Rep. Marcia Fudge, a Warrensville Heights Democrat who represents Cleveland Heights, said she is working hard to address the backlog for the 47,000 veterans in her district.

Fudge said she has met with Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki and urged him to address the delays.  She is also a co-sponsor of the Veterans Backlog Reduction Act, which would ensure that any veteran who must wait more than 125 days for a ruling, receive compensation at a 40 percent rating pending a final ruling on that claim.

"We must care for our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, when they’re abroad and when they come home," Fudge said in a news release. "Our nation’s two million active duty troops and 22 million veterans have my solemn commitment that just as the military vows to leave no soldier behind; I will work to ensure that we leave no veteran behind."

In 2011, the Department started implementing a computerized system in several of its regional offices. However, despite spending $537 million on the new program and employing 3,300 claims processors, 97 percent of veterans’ claims are still on paper.

In addition, even though Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki pledged back in March that the VA will end the enormous backlog by 2015, they quietly backed off that promise in an email statement several weeks ago.

The data above was obtained by The Center for Investigative Reporting from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs and is updated weekly.