they re still asking for, like i said hard paper work through fax machines. my goodness, when is the last time i used a fax machine or anyone coming from afghanistan, nothing is digital. and it s a process you can t understand from the outside and you have to sit and wait and call once a week and hope somebody picks up the phone and hope the file doesn t get lost. the and there was a floor in the va the literal weight of the paper work was so great it made it structurally unfound. this is bureaucracy, whether it s tips from the private sector to streamline, transform the va bureaucracy to make it response to need. alisyn: oh, my gosh, this is exhibit a of red tape. yes. alisyn: it seems like there is now a groundswell of people trying to turn it around. there was a meeting in the white house to address the big problem with the backlog. it has bipartisan support, one of the few issues, as you
was 300,000 pending claims, 300,000 to what would be projected to be a million waiting in line for the claims to be processed and takes on average, 270 days for a climb to be processed. if you re in l.a., that s 619 days and if you re in new york city, you re probably waiting two years to hear back on a successful completion. it s dysfunctional bureaucracy, stuck, not able to deliver to the needs of the 21st century veterans and generations. alisyn: it s really shocking. this is the very organization that s supposed to be helping and protecting our returning veterans. so, why isn t this a more streamlined process? well, i tell you, we use the phrase sometimes in the military everywhere, and it s like a self-licking ice cream cone. it s very good at feeding itself and meeting its own needs and throw conferences and process lots of paper work, but not necessarily quickly, but it doesn t know how to meet the needs of veterans in a timely manner.