Well now that you have read up
on the truth about Gerry Manar
and who he really is, and why
it's such a mystery that he is
allowed to parade around Capitol
Hill with a large a significant
"title" as the official VFW
spokesperson allegedly for Veterans
everywhere even though he himself
is a full blown retiree of the
VA Central Office, working as
a policy attorney and creating
the very mess that we all find
ourselves in: I hope you are ready
for the rest of the story because
this has all bumped up a notch
now and it takes serious connect-the-dots
types like ME to put this
whole VA Claims Backlog crisis
into some perspective.

I introduce to you below, the
sworn, under oath testimony
of one John Roberts who appeared
this week at the official House
Veterans Affairs Committee hearing
on Artificial Intelligence based
Automation planning for VA Claims.

Please note this is only the
written portion of his statement
that he entered into the record
for the hearing. A LOT more was
said from this man under Q & A
by the Committee, and to be able
to take all of it in, you will
have to refer to the AUDIO link
and hearing page at the Committee
website which is listed below
elsewhere in this FORUM page.

What becomes apparent after studying
this testimony of John Roberts,
is that all of VFW Veterans have
been HAD and they have
been HAD in a large and serious way.

Even if you are on medication right
now, it won't take you all long to
figure out this story.

In the chat Blog under this one,
I have detailed the background of
Gerry Manar who is the lead spokesperson
for VFW right now in Washington.
And THEN, here comes John
Robert's statement right here in
this chat Blog. When ya put these
2 things back to back, the lightbulb
comes on, and the true national
hoodwinking by VSO's everywhere becomes
finally revealed to you. We have
done our best to bring this "outting"
to all of you in small incremental
chat Forums to you here at VFJ.
But now this entire story is moving
into position for a TOUCHDOWN
y'all and won't it be sweet when
that day comes.

John Roberts has pulled no punches.
He has outted the entire VA claims
system as it sits in Cleveland, and
he has outted it as the flaming
monkey circus that it truly is.
There is NOT a shred of legal
constitutionality anywhere in what
he has described in this statement.

The more you look it over, then
the more you begin to question why
none of this has been apparent
to the VSO's all over the country,
even though there has been THOUSANDS
of us all describing this very thing
at VA Regional Offices across the
country. How could VSO's be so freaking
DUMB??
How could Gerry Manar be so freaking
DUMB??

The answer to all of this Boys, is
that too many of you are caught up
in Bravado Worship and you do
it at your very own expense. This has
been used over the years to pressure
other Veterans to be "silenced" and
to be "unsuspecting" and to be "unquestioning"
and to be "blindly obedient" to the
system who is raping and looting
your very own lives not to mention
the lives of others.

Nothing which John Roberts describes
below is even LEGAL, let alone,
fully compliant with constitutional
DUE PROCESS. If ya haven't heard
the rest of the audio transcript
of this hearing, then you had better
get to it because you are also
missing the part where it was stated
by one of the other panelists that
"....the burden is shifted over to
the Veteran to fix or compensate for
the mistakes made by VA Raters...." !!

Uh-Huh I just KNEW that would
get yer attention !!

So it's time to start putting 2 + 2
together Boys because we have
been telling you this horror story
all along, but the VSO Nazi's have
wanted to stick their heads in the
sand and not face the reality of
what this really is.

The VSO's have been FORCING sick and
injured Veterans to "process" this
line of unadulterated CRAP which
John Roberts has listed below
in his statement. Veterans were
forced into their deaths at the
very hands of the Suck-Up VSO's
who were too busy rubber stamping
this system instead of probing
it and OUTTING it the way our
boy John has below. It will bring
you to tears, at least for a
minute, when ya stop and think
of just how many died at the
hands of these Piddle & Diddle
VSO's and it's worth taking in
that pain so your spirits can
be renewed and you can get your
sense of FIGHT up under your
belt once again for this new
legislative session of 2008.

Perhaps the next time some VSO Fool
gets into your face and starts talking
to you about YOUR responsibility
to prepare a "well developed claim"
to the VA, be sure ya do tell
him right to his face in a New York
Minute to go shit in his hat and wear
it!!

I bring to you now, the sworn testimony
of John Roberts before the House
Veterans Affairs Committee.

Hey VFW ---- go home to your wives
and get out of the claims business!


__________________________________________

Testimony By John Roberts
National Service Director
Wounded Warrior Project


Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Lamborn, distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today regarding the use of technology to improve the efficiency of the Department of Veterans Affairs claims process. My name is John Roberts, and I am the National Service Director for the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP), a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to assisting the men and women of the United States Armed Forces who have been injured during the current conflicts around the world. As a result of our direct, daily contact with these wounded warriors, we have a unique perspective on their needs and the obstacles they face as they attempt to transition and reintegrate into their communities.

In addition to my experience with WWP in general and the Cleveland’s specifically, I am a service-connected veteran, a former veterans service officer, and was most recently a supervisor with the Houston VA Regional Office where I reviewed claims and became familiar with a number of significant deficiencies within the system.

In order to fully appreciate the problem, it is important to understand how the system currently operates. Despite recent advances in technology common to most businesses, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) claims processing system is still dependent on a paper system. Although the VBA can now view electronic health records transmitted from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the ratings team is still required to print the records and place them in the veteran claims folder, which are then reviewed page by page by a Rating Veterans Service Representative.

The current model of the VBA claims processing system has a total of six separate teams and often, but not always, includes another team that is dedicated to processing only the OIF/OEF cases. The six main teams are as follows:

Triage which handles the incoming claims, evidence, and is charged with maintaining the outdated file cabinet system, which stores the hard copy paper claims files

Pre-Determination which is charged with the initial development of all claims for service connected disability.

Rating is responsible for reviewing all available evidence and determining if disabilities are service related. If so, the percentage of disability assigned.

Post Determination is responsible for inputting awards and generating notification letters to the claimants.

Appeals maintains all pending appeals submitted by the claimants.

Public Contact is charged with the general phone calls and questions and conducting one-on-one interviews with the veterans, dependents and survivors.

Files must be hand carried to each of the teams, and any member of these teams has access to the records at any given time.

Despite the number of people with access and the ease with which a file may be misplaced, VBA has only one way to locate a claim file once it is removed from the filing cabinet. An electronic system called COVERS is available, but is only effective if utilized by the individual employee. Rather than having access to the file through electronic means, COVERS requires manual input to identify a specific location or individual. If this is not done, it is a very time consuming task to locate one file among all the files that are in the processing system. For example, in the Houston Regional Office (RO), there are approximately 200 employees and each person could have up to 30 files or more on his/her desk.

Another challenge is the outdated filing system used to store the thousands of active files warehoused either at or near each Regional Office. If a File Clerk or any employee for that matter is not paying attention and misfiles a claims folder into the wrong cabinet or drawer, it again becomes a very time consuming and difficult task to check each and every drawer to locate the missing file.

The Triage team at each RO is also responsible for the intake of all new claims and all evidence submitted by each and every claimant. If the file is not easily located, it is placed on search within the Covers system, until the file can be located. Because there are so many teams within the claims processing system, a particular file could be located within any of the teams at given time. This allows for the human error factor, which is often why the numerous pieces of vital evidence are often lost or misplaced and cannot be associated with the appropriate claim folder.

If a file cannot be located and all avenues have been exhausted to locate the file, the RO will then take action to rebuild the folder from scratch. This means that all prior evidence and claims submitted by the claimant are also lost. The responsibility to replace the missing evidence or claims is placed on the claimant. The VA will ask the claimant to submit any copies that he/she may have in their possession.

In addition, due to the current war on terrorism, VBA is faced with another challenge. The new challenge is trying to obtain records from National Guard and Reserve units. Active duty forces obviously do not file a claim until released from service. Once demobilized a member of the Reserve or National Guard component is eligible to file such a claim. If reactivated, however, the Reservist’s claim is halted and he/she takes the medical file with them to the theater.

There is also the large backlog of records requests to the Records Management Center which houses not only claim folders, but now receives all service medical records for recently discharged servicemen. Think of this as a large warehouse of nothing but paper files and an inadequate staff to locate each and every file or record that has been requested by Regional Offices across the country.

Another significant issue which can be identified at every Regional Office around the country is the varying levels of experience with the Rating Veterans Service Representatives (RVSR). In any given case, you could take five individual RVSR’s and give them the same file and come up with five different opinions on how the case should be rated. Although there have been improvements with the implementation of RBA 2000, the current electronic system utilized to rate compensation claims, the system is far from perfect. The overall ratings decision including service connection and actual percentage is left up to the interpretation of the individual RVSR. The gap in varying decisions nation wide can also be attributed to local policy at each individual Regional Office. While this has been the case for many years, the issue has come to a head due to the increased frequency with which this generation of veterans speak to each other and compare their individual situations.

Mr. Chairman, unfortunately, these are only a few of the issues that surround a paper-based system, and situations like that of the Cleveland’s are not unique. Many working groups, Government Accountability Office reports, and commissions have made recommendations on this topic. Most recently, the Veterans Disability Benefits Commission suggested that claims cycle times and accuracy could be improved by “establishing a simplified and expedited process for well-documented claims, using best business practices and maximum feasible use of information technology.” While the availability of well-trained, customer service minded employees cannot be overvalued, the implementation of recommendations such as these can help to greatly reduce the complexity of the claims processing system and result in timely results.

WWP looks forward to working with you and the VA to try to resolve these problems. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today, and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

__________________________________________
END of Roberts Statement


Hey John, save it on the issue of
preparing "well documented claims".
We have asked for Claims Amnesty based
on your testimony and screw the whole
thing, we say! The process is NOT legal
so why would we want to "accommodate"
the VA any further??