U.S. Senator Dick Durbin says the way American veterans receive disability claims has “got to change.”
His comments come as the federal Department of Veterans Affairs is working on a new digital, paper-less way of handling the claims. The V.A. is working to get that done by September.
Durbin says on average, Illinois veterans wait close to a year for payments which he says is the third-worst rate in the country.
“There is no excuse for people waiting months, sometimes over a year, to get a determination on their disability. We owe it to these veterans to do a much better job.”
The Veterans Affairs secretary says the new system should reduce the wait for almost-all disability claims to about four months by 2015. Durbin spoke at a Memorial Day ceremony at the Camp Butler National Cemetery, just outside of Springfield. The cemetery is partially on land that was a military training camp during the Civil War.