For more than 90 years, The American Legion has acted as the nation’s leading advocate for proper health care, economic opportunity and legal benefits for U.S. military veterans. The Legion was instrumental in the creation of the Veterans Administration in 1930, and an ardent supporter of its elevation to cabinet status when it became the Department of Veterans Affairs in 1989. The relationship between VA and The American Legion continues to evolve today.
As it has for decades, The American Legion continues to aggressively lobby for adequate funding of VA health care, timely access to facilities, fair rulings on benefit claims, and economic opportunities for those who have come home changed by their military experiences. A nationwide network of American Legion department service officers works diligently to assist veterans as they pursue benefits and care they earned and deserve. At the local, state and national levels, thousands of Legionnaires provide countless hours to help veterans obtain their benefits. The American Legion provides professional representation in claims appeals, discharge disputes and transition assistance from active-duty to civilian status throughout the country.
Today, as the number of discharged veterans from the global war on terrorism has surpassed 500,000, the Legion’s federally chartered role to support them could not be more profound. The Legion strongly believes that a veteran is a veteran, no matter the war era, nature or location of service. In that light, The American Legion is the only organization that works on behalf of all 24.5 million U.S. veterans and all who will follow.
The American Legion stands on the front line of change in the pillar of service known as “Veterans Affairs & Rehabilitation.”
It is a complex and vital part of the organization’s mission – particularly now, as a new generation of wartime veterans enters the civilian and VA worlds.
Following are Veterans Affairs & Rehabilitation issues of high priority to The American Legion:
VA Claims Backlog
The backlog of unresolved VA claims – from undecided initial applications to cases many years into the appeals process – has been estimated at upward of 1 million nationwide. The American Legion has strongly urged VA and Congress to reduce the amount of time it takes to decide a veteran’s claim, without reducing the quality of the decision. Each claim is a separate, unique situation involving a human life and deserves careful analysis to assure the veteran receives all due benefits.
The Legion supports careful implementation of new technology to better track medical records from enlistment through discharge and then on to VA, in order to improve the process. The era of paper-based claims processing, where folders of records and documents are stacked in VA regional offices, is not conducive to effective, efficient claims adjudication in today’s era of electronic data management.
Further, The American Legion strongly supports the shifting of focus from quantity to quality when adjudicating claims. Currently, a rapid movement of claims known as “churning” allows claims to be processed several times to correct errors. The American Legion believes that working a claim correctly the first time may take longer individually, but will in the long term reduce the backlog because the claim will only be handled once. The American Legion is working closely with VA and Congress to bring VA claims processing into the 21st century.