Credit: CSPAN
On Monday night in Washington D.C., Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick (PA-8) accepted his invitation to join the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs as an ad hoc member at a hearing concerning disturbing and corrupt reports of veterans’ benefit backlog and data manipulation at VA offices, including our local office in Philadelphia.
“Unfortunately, America will learn tonight that the ‘VA scandal’ is not limited to just secret VA hospital waiting lists. The agency within the VA that is tasked with making sure our veterans receive disability and pension benefits is failing,” said Fitzpatrick. “The goal to end the backlog by 2015 was unrealistic—and worse, it led to a culture of corruption in which staff and front line supervisors were provided with strong incentives to alter information. We have now learned that is exactly what they did.”
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Yesterday the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) published a report titled, Review of the Special Initiative to Process Rating Claims Pending Over 2 Years. The report provided detailed information into the amount of corruption that was found within the investigation.
The Special Initiative report began in April of 2013 in an effort by VA Regional Office staff to issue provisional ratings for cases awaiting required evidence and complete these older claims within 60 days. The report discovered at the end of June 2013 that 516,922 claims were pending in backlog, but only 1,258 claims had been pending for more than 2 years; while it was estimated that over 7,000 claims had been incorrectly removed from the inventory, although they were still awaiting final decisions.
In the VA report, it is stated that if it wasn’t for this audit and review, some veterans may have never received final decisions and would be waiting for benefits indefinitely. Generally, these errors occurred because the VA Regional Offices felt pressured to complete these claims within the 60 day deadline, according to the report.
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It is estimated that VA Regional Office staff inaccurately processed over 17,000 claims, resulting in over $40 million in improper payments.
Congressman Fitzpatrick has worked for several years to bring attention to serious matters occurring at the Philadelphia VA office. In 2013, a report from his office showed that over 400 local veterans and spouses had died waiting for such backlogged benefits, along with flaws in payments and procession.
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While such concerns had been largely rejected by the VA in the past, yesterdays published report nearly unanimously confirms them, according to Fitzpatrick.
At the dramatic hearing, Fitzpatrick questioned witnesses, including a whistle-blower who worked with the Congressman to expose examples of mismanagement and corruption at the Philadelphia office.
“Last year, I brought the issue of duplicate payments to the attention of Secretary Shinseki. Here is the correspondence from the Undersecretary of Veterans Affairs for Benefits stating that there is no problem with duplicate payments and that the money lost is minimal. Why are they saying this when you have evidence otherwise?” asked Fitzpatrick.
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Whistle-blower testimony notes that in the Philadelphia office alone, improper payments topped $2 million.
Among other findings from the OIG report and witness testimony were:
- The VA manipulated dates to make claims look newer then they actually were,
- The VA hid and shredded mail to lessen workloads,
- The VA ignored whistle-blower warnings—leading to millions of dollars of duplicate payments being wrongfully issued, and
- The VA is pressuring and retaliating against the very whistle-blowers who are trying to help veterans, and trying to make the system work better.
