New Bill to Speed Up Disability Claim Process for Veterans Introduced

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NY Daily News.

Following the call of several lawmakers to President Barack Obama in an effort to ease the backlogs of Veterans’ disability benefit claims, a new bill that would speed up the claiming process was recently introduced.

News have it that the U.S. Representative, Grace Meng, D-Flushing has introduced a new bill that would speed up the process of filing disability benefit claims for veterans in Queens.

Apparently, veterans from boroughs of New York City suffered the longest waiting times to receive benefits across the nation due to massive backlogs of disability claims. Usually, many of the veterans have to wait for as long as 500 days or less than a couple of years for their benefits. Therefore, the congresswoman has finally come up with the legislation.

In her statement that was quoted below, Meng said:

“Forcing disabled veterans to wait such long periods of time to receive the vital benefits they require is disgraceful and unconscionable. Our veterans and returning troops who valiantly served our country must not continue to be subjected to these shameful and inexcusable delays. They deserve better.”  

So far, there are approximately 878,000 veterans across the nation have disability claims waiting to be processed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). About 593,000 of which already exceeded the agency’s processing goal of 125 days, Meng added. Nationwide, the average waiting time of processing a claim for a veteran is 310 days while claimants in Queens experienced an average of 499 days waiting time.

In addition, aside from the prolonged waiting time, nearly 14 percent of the claims processed by the agency’s regional office are erroneous.

Consequently, the proposed law would require the regional office to provide an annual report which required the latter to explain why it did not meet a specific goal and ask for the resources it needs to meet the goal.

Meanwhile, several Los Angeles social security claim lawyers agreed with Meng when she attributed the rapidly growing number of disability claims to the increasing number of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. We can never indeed deny the benefits that those heroes deserve following the sacrifices they made to our nation.

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