I mirror that as well. It's somewhat of a shame that we lost our old system, because one of the big areas now where health practitioners will more than likely have to be extremely proficient is in understanding Veterans Affairs' archaic legislation.
Unless you understand the legislation and what a person is entitled to and you have a person who can mitigate some of the really tough legislation that doesn't sometimes seem to make sense.... That's why things worked a lot more smoothly before: it was because you had a public servant who could step in and say what you were missing. They were willing to work with the practitioner to try to approve it.
That's not how it works anymore. Now if you don't have what you need, it's just denied; that's it. You're sent off a denial letter and you start again. Right now, what we're seeing is that a lot of providers don't want to deal with Veterans Affairs anymore.
Veterans are on a fixed income when they're paying for these services and hoping to get reimbursed later on, which is tough for them.