Veteran Benefits can Vary by State

Many of the disabled Veterans that I assist in Utah wonder if their VA disability claims processing will differ if they move to a different part of the country.  This is a logical question since VA disability benefits are a federal program it would seem that that both processing, outcome, and overall benefit would be uniform throughout the country.  The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on an issue that many suspected has been a problem for a long time that different VA Regional Offices process claims to varying degrees of speed.  The story tells the story of a Veteran with multiple service connected disabilities including PTSD, brain injury, and skin ailment who was unable to get assistance in the larger cities in Minnesota but when he lived in the tiny outliers in Minnesota he was able to get his compensation package much quicker than if he had lived in Minneapolis.  McClatchy newspapers reported that a Veteran in Kentucky is more likely to have a higher benefit than a Veteran in South Dakota for the same disabilities.  Why the disparity in VA disability benefits?  Its really simple since in the VA disability system there are different disability adjudicators who decide their disability cases in different ways.  The disability system is subject to a lot of interpretation.  In Minnesota there are Veteran services at the county level whereas in other states such as Utah there are state services but there don’t appear to be services for Veterans at the county level.  Regardless there appear to be wide disparities in how certain regional offices of the VA process claims in terms of speed and rate of errors.  Hopefully uniformity across the VA system will improve as the agency goes paperless.