About 18 percent of veterans and their survivors who attempted to electronically submit their “intent to file” PACT Act claims by Wednesday's deadline to have their benefits if approved retroactively backdated to Aug. 9, 2022 received an unwelcome response when visiting the Department of Veterans website on Tuesday.
An error message that VA officials say was caused by the high volume of “intent to file” claims that were submitted in advance of the deadline.
Signed into law in Aug. 2022, the PACT Act expands VA health care and benefits to veterans of all eras who were exposed to toxins as a result of their military service. Although there's no deadline to apply for PACT Act-related benefits, anyone who files a claim or submits their intent to do so by Wednesday could collect payments retroactive to last year if the claim is approved.
VA officials stressed that every veteran or survivor who received an error message on Tuesday while applying for PACT Act benefits can consider their intent to file complete.
“We are working to contact these individuals to confirm directly to them that their intent to file will be honored and their effective date protected,” VA said in a message. “While we take steps to resolve this issue, we are putting an emergency banner on the VA website to reassure veterans and survivors that their intents to file will be honored. We are also changing the intent to file error message (also below) to confirm that, despite the error message, the intent to file has been saved.”
VA officials continue to urge veterans to file their PACT Act claims despite the technical issue. A high call volume to 1-800-MYVA was also reported on Tuesday. Wait times that normally average 10 to 30 seconds reached 10 to 15 minutes.
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According to statistics from VA, it has received around 786,000 disability claims under the PACT Act, processed almost 435,000 and approved more than 348,000. In addition, nearly 111,000 veterans who believe they have been exposed to toxins have enrolled in VA health care since the law went into effect.
More than 4.1 million veterans have completed a toxic screening questionnaire which will help determine whether additional tests are required.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.
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