VA E-Claim System Costs Alarm Congress

The cost of VA's electronic claims network, called the Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS), is $1 billion so far and soon will reach $1.3 billion, VA conceded last week to the House Veterans Affairs Committee. That's more than double VA's original estimate of $580 million for VBMS in 2009. Costs are continuing to grow too because, by design, VBMS gets a software upgrade every three months. And apart from quarterly upgrades, VA plans for major innovations to the VBMS starting in 2018. For more details, see this Military Update article.