Veterans Appeals Efficiency Act of 2025

Key Points

• The bill requires the VA to submit annual reports on how long remanded claims take and how many veterans die, including by suicide, while waiting for their appeals. This data would help Congress understand the real human cost of delays.
• The Board of Veterans' Appeals gains new authority to group similar cases together, resolving common legal questions in a single ruling instead of deciding them one at a time across thousands of individual appeals.
• The VA must use technology to track claims at every stage, including those stuck in a queue waiting to be assigned, those sent back for another review, and those waiting for a hearing. This creates accountability for bottlenecks in the system.
• The Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims gets expanded power, including new class action authority and the ability to send narrow questions back to the Board without throwing out the whole case. This prevents veterans from restarting their appeals over minor errors.
• An independent research center (FFRDC) will assess whether the Board should have authority to issue precedential decisions that would bind future cases, and the VA will study common legal questions using artificial intelligence to reduce repeated delays.

Votes

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