By Michael Brewer
Special to the Alpine Mountaineer
Title 38 of the U.S. Code dictates the care and treatment of veterans of war. While the code is immensely detailed and cannot be altered without Congressional approval, its implementation can be somewhat amorphous.
A recent class action lawsuit states that the Veterans Administration closed tens of thousands of disability claims in error as a result of a faulty automated system. The worst part is that the affected veterans were not informed after waiting years for the Board of Veterans Appeals decision.
From 1990 to 2025, the VA used a system called VOCALS to track disability claims. Periodically it ran a sweep that closed any appeal where the data base did not indicate a timely filed substantive appeal. The egregious error was in the VA’s lag time to log incoming documents.
The veterans who filed in a timely manner still had their claims denied as they were never entered into the system in a timely fashion.
With a nod to transparency, the VA Inspector General acknowledged that one in six of the automated closures were done in error.
In March 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims certified Freund v. Collins as a class action lawsuit.
Under the proposed settlement, 28,258 appeals have been flagged for an audit. Another 64,599 veterans will be notified of their potential for an appeal. Every appeal confirmed to have been erroneously closed will be reactivated.
The ancillary issue to this suit is the immense vigilance needed to keep the VA claim process honest and forthright.
One example of “off-stage” tactics is the movement to remove the “D” from the PTSD diagnosis. The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders provides the formal medical code for the disability claim process. If the “D” is removed, it is no longer considered a disorder and therefore no longer compensable.
Source: Hill and Ponton
Editor’s note: Michael Brewer served in the U.S. Marine Corps and is a retired Veteran Service Officer.
0 Comments