What is the New Law Coming Into Effect?

The Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act is designed to assist veterans in the appeals process. It takes six years on average for veterans to resolve an appeal for a disability claim with the VA. Any time a veteran files a claim for disability that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) rejects, they have the right to appeal. But the average wait before a final decision is six years — and one service member has even waited 25 years. As a result, the number of pending appeals has increased sharply, rising in the past two years alone from 380,000 to now 470,000 pending appeals.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) currently spends about $63.7 billion per year on 4.1 million veterans with disabilities related to their time in service. The law established three new “lanes” for veterans appeals, to separate them out into separate categories and hopefully ease the speed with which they go through, rather than all funneling them together into one bureaucratic catch-all as before.

The “board lane” instantly moves a pending appeal over to the Board of Veterans’ Appeals and skips the intervening layers of VA hierarchy.

The “local higher level review lane” moves a rejected claim to another adjudicator higher up on the VA hierarchy to take a second look at.

The “new evidence lane” allows veterans to submit new evidence related to their disability claim.

While the legislation directs the VA to create this structure for appeals, it does not include specific plans for implementation. Rather, the VA is directed to define which appeals will go in which lane and to implement that structure. This means that we will have to wait and see how this will be implemented.

To learn more contact the Vet Defender. You can schedule your appointment by clicking on this link: Schedule an Appointment