The Plain Dealer: Nationally and in Cleveland, VA disability claim delays are a disgrace: editorial
They put their lives on the line. Now they stand in line.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is a Sargasso Sea, awash in about 500,000 backlogged disability compensation claims nationally.
Earlier this year, the total number of pending cases was closer to 800,000, the majority of which — nearly 70 percent — had been floating around like so much flotsam and jetsam for more than 125 days.
That, as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown noted in a meeting Monday at the Cuyahoga County Veterans Service Commission, is “unfathomable” and “inexcusable.”