“Automated System Often Unjustly Boosts Veterans’ Disability Benefits” (May 11, 2015) has some fun stuff for students of (1) the use of IT, (2) the tasks faced by government workers, and (3) the attitude of Americans toward work versus cashing government checks.
Here are some excerpts:
A software system introduced in 2012 that automates veterans’ disability levels for compensation relies almost solely on a patient’s self-reported ailments, the employees say, even in the face of contradictory information.
Increased disability levels—the degree to which a veteran is considered impaired from earning a normal living—is partly why costs in the VA benefits branch have surged 65% to nearly $65 billion in 2014, from the end of 2011.
Approved veterans also are receiving compensation for more diagnosed problems: averaging 4.3 disabilities each in 2013, up from 3.9 in 2011. The VA expects to pay out nearly $72 billion in benefits in 2015, according to the agency.
“Regardless of our objective observations, we’re required to check off all the symptoms the veteran says,” said Gail Poyner, a psychologist who conducts disability examinations for the VA in Oklahoma City.
That information is passed along to a rater, who inputs it into the software.
Without the software, Mr. Adams estimates that a human rater would have determined the vet was only 30% disabled.
“Moving checked [symptom] boxes from one place to another,” he said of his work under the new system. “A monkey could do it.”
In one claim reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, a veteran admitted to his VA psychologist that he was capable of working, but preferred to “do nothing but watch TV movies or play video games” and “use marijuana all day every day.”
The example veteran got $37,200/year. As this is tax-free it exceeds median compensation for an American who works full-time (though child support in Massachusetts or Wisconsin could pay a lot better!). What the WSJ did not explore is the tendency of people who get these monthly checks to move to Colorado and smoke marijuana legally…
Related:
- 496 out of 519 disability claims approved at Long Island Railroad (older stories about this railroad in which 98% of workers retired with disability pensions)
- NYPD/FDNY PTSD disability pensions (nytimes)
- three quarters of FDNY firefighters retire with disability
The above software could do a lot more though. If one used software like SAS to find out certain patterns one could easily determine which claims are likely true and which are overstated. There are probabilities and bell curves and causation (normally there are field reports as to the injuries sustained before discharge etc. and then there are ongoing medical reports etc.). I have a feeling one does not WANT to apply such cross-referencing and testing and plausibility checks because the clientele here has a high standing and who would want to deny a veteran who risked his/her life for one’s country some benefits? As far as I am informed, the health regime in US prisons is not as lenient …