Boozman Urges Support for Bills to Ensure Timely Death Certification of Veterans, Strengthen VA Fraud Prevention Efforts

Click here to watch Boozman's exchanges with the hearing witnesses.

WASHINGTON-The U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs held a hearing to consider pending legislation including a measure authored by U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR) to help expedite the process of certifying a veteran's passing and minimize or avoid delays in conveying benefits owed to their loved ones, as well as a bill to establish a Veterans Scam and Fraud Evasion Officer at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

Boozman, a senior member of the committee, welcomed the department's support and feedback on the Veterans Burial Timeliness and Death Certificate Accountability Act including proactive steps it is taking to prevent delays in issuing death certificates.

"Families of veterans have suffered delays in certifying their loved ones' passing as long as eight weeks. This creates difficulties for the families to receive death benefits, burial honors, and forces local governments to maintain possession of the veteran's body," Boozman said.

"The VA supports [this bill], absolutely," said Acting Assistant Under Secretary for Health for Clinical Services, Veterans Health Administration, Dr. Thomas O'Toole. "[Certification] is greatly facilitated if that patient has been seen recently. We recently stood up an office and put out a directive as well as training for all our VA clinicians that's intended to clarify and codify all those processes internally."

"We work with many sources of information for first notice of death because we want to make sure that the survivors receive their benefits in the most timely manner. We've reduced our inventory of Dependency and Indemnity Compensation claims dramatically, working on getting those timely benefits to survivors," said Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Benefits, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Margarita Devlin.

Boozman also raised the significant difficulties former servicemembers face after falling victim to a scam and pointed to legislation he supports as an effective solution to help them navigate the aftermath - the Veterans Scam and Fraud Evasion (VSAFE) Act.

"Veterans are uniquely targeted by scammers to exploit access to their benefits," Boozman said. "I'm proud to be an original cosponsor of the VSAFE Act. The adverse things that can happen as a result of the scams and, then too, not being able to get a death certificate in a timely fashion - we do need to correct that because it really does put people in difficult situations."

"We did support the bill. Having that position codified in law would strengthen our capabilities. We take very seriously protecting our veterans from fraudsters. The bad guys are always changing their techniques, which means we have to be sharp and continually evolving to change our practices. Identity theft and other types of fraud can be catastrophic for families. Financial loss, loss of credit can result, and that's why we provide one-on-one remediation," said Devlin.

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