Boehner Says US Veterans' Claims System Is Broken

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner said the system for handling veterans' disability claims is broken and he wants the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs to explain what is being done to fix it. Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, said in a letter to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki this week that the benefit delivery system for veterans has not shown any noticeable improvement in the four years Shinseki has headed the department and the backlog of compensation claims "remains alarmingly high."

The VA was preparing a formal response to Boehner's letter, a VA spokesman said Friday. The VA has said it completed a "record-breaking" 1 million claims per year the past three years. But the speaker wrote in his letter that the backload remains high, especially in Ohio, despite the announcement at the Cleveland Veterans Affairs Regional Office last summer of a new organizational model to help reduce the backlog by 2015. The Cleveland office, which handles claims from around the state, is now processing claims in an average of 334 days compared with the national average of 272 days and the VA's own goal of 125 days, Boehner said...