[caption id=”attachment_144343″ align=”aligncenter” width=”1024″] Thomas Foster, a Navy veteran from Huntsville, dances with his wife, Carolyn, as World War II veterans filled the Davidson Center during the the 70th Anniversary of the end of World War II Recognition and Thank You Celebration, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. (Eric Schultz/AL.com via AP)
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More than 35,000 combat veterans are blocked from receiving health care thanks to a Department of Veterans Affairs computer error.
The issue is tied up in means testing VA benefits. Combat veterans receive free treatment for five years regardless of their income status. However, the computer system requires a means-test form to be submitted. Thus, roughly 35,000 veterans have their enrollment “pending” because the system views their applications as incomplete, according to The Huffington Post.
The issue, apparent since April, was made public by Scott Davis, a program specialist at the VA Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta, who provided documents to the Huffington Post.
The number of pending cases range depending on the nearest VA hospital.
Clarksburg, West Virginia has 50 veterans waiting. Washington, D.C. has a backlog of 1,061 veterans, the highest in the nation.
After five years, combat veterans lose free health care eligibility. About 16,000 veterans have been pending for more than five years.
Davis proposes taking social security numbers from the system to tell the system that those combat veterans should be enrolled immediately, but VA spokeswoman Walinda West said that VA Secretary Bob McDonald doesn’t have the authority, something that Davis disagrees with.
The VA has faced many problems in recent years, with Congress passing a reform bill last year. Funding has increased, especially since 2009, but problems greater than financial are harder to address.
