The Obama administration has yet to fully unsnarl the reimbursements from the Cash for Clunkers program, and have claimed that the overwhelming demand caught them by surprise. In contrast, the latest GI Bill for veteran education, the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008, has been in effect for more than a year, with fairly predictable demand curves. So why did the administration botch tuition payments for tens of thousands of veterans at the beginning of this semester?
The U.S. government failed to send promised college tuition checks to tens of thousands of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars before they returned to school this fall, even after being warned that it was inadequately staffed for the job.
The Veterans Affairs Department blamed a backlog of claims filed for GI Bill education benefits that has left veterans who counted on the money for tuition and books scrambling to make ends meet. …
Out of more than 277,000 veterans who have filed for the college tuition benefits this semester, more than 200,000 claims have been processed and approved, but fewer than 11 percent of the veterans have received the funding, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA).
The group says it has been contacted by thousands of veterans who have not received their benefits and that they are forced to take out loans or pay the money out of their pockets.
Just imagine what these same people can do when they take over your health benefits!
How long will it take before the media notices the pattern here? This program has been in place for months, and now it has a whopping 89% failure rate in a program that shouldn’t have a 5% failure rate. It doesn’t take a claims genius to process and approve tuition reimbursement requests. They are a lot less complicated than, say,health care claims.
There is no excuse that covers this performance. For those who believe that government can handle systems better than the private sector, let them first demand that government fix the systems it currently controls. They can start with the School for Soldiers program, and then start working on Indian Health Services, and let us know when they’re done culling the waste, fraud, and abuse from Medicare. Maybe at that point, we’ll trust them with a pilot program someplace else.