of the a an agency is looking for a sort of an isolated and you know what we're doing is a perfectly rational reasonable interpretation and we think there is a broader e p a problem here that requires the court and the engines we should have looked we don't see any factual sixty education of the claims the agency makes and then on the other hand important aspects of the problem and one thing that i think is very important to remember is that the claims process and the appeals process  so if we're gaining so called efficiencies which we question at the claims process level and we now have a situation of being went to congress a couple weeks ago with a new budget they have a four hundred thousand case back on the board level so  an effort to create some systemic change in one part of the system necessarily should be considering all parts of the system something that gets you a tiny efficiency over here but the engine no efficiency or creates a greater problem later part of your system measure that on at the the appeals part of the system so somebody processing a piece of paper or an electronic file faster at the front door does not mean that there is no appeal of them or that those uniformity that provides specific details everybody knows what they're dealing with wouldn't that also translate to efficiencies at the appellate and not necessarily on a question the premise that everybody knows what they're dealing with you know no petitioner in any of these matters opposes standardized forms and our understanding is that most people do use them and that's a plan task however i think is important has given individual veterans who have meet the criteria who have served our country the right to seek certain benefits if they are entitled to meet the criteria so while the v a may distribute those benefits as doesn't and that's what we're concerned about here and didn't try to accommodate that by allowing people to do something called an intent to file scheme or there's three different ways to notify the v a of your intention to file and one of them including calling designated v a personnel your honor i submit and i apologize for the way this will sound i know from my personal client base judge norman just last year in fact on march twenty fourth of last year issued an opinion in a single judge opinion describing the functioning of three point one five seven b which is what we're talking about in that particular case there was a veteran with a lot of mental disabilit he was in and out of the hospitals and in that the judge lays out the functioning of the regulation and then renamed it to the board because there was a possibility the veterans day of service conditions of that earlier effective date up to three years earlier based on his hospitalizations that has been lost under in the un by removing three point one five seven b which is what they've done in this role making they've lost another example and a hypothetical situation that might implemented so you started out by saying you're going to tell us exactly how these cases differ from the other cases that are pending and i think you got way off of that so that the first thing you said is that there were global a p a issues but i i don't understand how that wasn't raised by the other cases in it may not have been articulated exactly the same way i think with i think our concern is that the relevant factors be considered that include the consistency of the agency's actions in the history of the statutes that the current situation we have no statistics on whether this program's been effective or not how effective it might be without the each we have no idea how many pills are coming but you know i see your point your honor that these are sort of necessarily include in some of the other petitions so and that's that's my problem so then i'll ask the other side the hypothetical the other way because none of us are on the other again and agrees that this was a not arbitrary and capricious or that there was a reasonable basis for the refer the for the change what is left that you could argue to us where we wouldn't be bound by that determination your honor that's a good question i think that the three point one five seven question was not specifically raise although with the other panel approves of the entire will making then we probably have a really interesting on one petition on our hands right  meaning that you would have to go on and i would have to see them for consideration and the best you could get from us is we're bound by them but we might not have come out the same way i suppose i suppose we could ask you to hurry filers who are here today we followed the a b a to the letter and made it to the effective date of the regulation before filing our petitions i think the other violators did not do that and for whatever reason it proceeded in parallel so almost immediately after the joint findings were filed in the first three case is countered like the next month or for the october session so that's what took us you know off guard we thought we would have a time a week or full record which the court asked what happens is that the actual document is attached to the decision so when the person gets that adverse decision from the regional office attached to the back of it are two pages of instructions telling them how to fill it out and the form itself so it's provided with the decision if for some reason the v a in the v a is supposed to in its own files know whether they've included this information with the final decision if the v a does not note that in other words the v a does not include the form with the decisions of the person has it when they get the decision they can fill it out and that person can just get a piece of paper and the v a has to accept it because  piece piece of paper the folks in the field out well clarify the understanding is that the v a is supposed to notify him that you've submitted the wrong for but that's not what the regulation specifically provides there's no duty necessarily and i'm not trying to suggest that there is right  they have to document that when they send out that decision there's their files they have to know that the decision was sent to include the n o d attached to the decision is there some box that they check is that how it works in the v a s files that they would have a copy of what they sent out and they would look to see that they sent the decision and if someone says later that i never got the decision the v a looks back and can't can't establish through their records that there was a decision the regulation says they are allowed to file under twenty one to a one week which is the old way but the answer does newman's question eventually what will happen for the person who has been provided the form but for whatever reason doesn't provide doesn't fill it out and send back the determination they have that at some point file determined that the board no longer will review whether something is adequate if the person has been provided the form they still retain the authority to determine timing and it's part of that they use the full panoply of tools at their don't agree that the supreme court of henderson has told sunny to sixty six which is the statute obviously the court is where appeals to the factions court i don't believe there's a decision yet by anybody with respect to this particular time period study was for a period of time the v a added the notice to disagreements to the decisions to see if people would return them actually use them but it was not mandatory because they couldn't make it mandatory because they needed a rule to make it mandatory so they did that said we we had time to define some documentation at a summary level but but couldn't we considered trying to determine whether we would and apologize we actually had this conversation up determine whether the best way to prove it would be to provide all of the decisions and all of notice of the disagreements but we felt that was simply first of all the decision makers in this process never had any of that information that was the source material and it would have been highly burdensome because it and heavily redacted because it's all personal to the each individual that or so we didn't include that source material like i said primarily because the decision makers didn't rely on the actual documents they but the decision makers did rely on i think starting well the decision makers had the study yes that the reason first of all that stuff back the rationale behind this is officials he's gained from using standard ice forms that the police and to it we do it all the time in fact in the military especially this is an occupation related to forms from the day you start you fill out a form to the day we follow form so the concept of training efficiencies through the use of standardized forms was one that i don't think anybody needed to necessarily there for wouldn't get the mail wouldn't know that they have to consult a federal register and get a form and all the rest of it and that's why i asked what happens if in fact they manage to well first of all let me ask answer that question first your honor because it's often the case that the v a is in the mission of helping veterans so certainly if the statistics would show after having this now been implemented a year actually because it was implemented last march that people were having issues communicating with the v a because of this change and the v a would do something about it that's why we're and that's why that is our mission our mission is to help veterans we're not interested in depriving veterans of access to the v a we're interested in trying to help them and i'm going to respond to that to the predicate of your concerns about homeless veterans and other other situations like that in their all along there is an element of having to have an ability to tell the v a where you are so that the v a can communicate with you another words even under the old system you needed to have a mailbox address so that the v a could send you the decision that you needed to have access to the postal service of that you send them your communications so standardized forms doesn't change that you still go to your postal service instead of it and you get the form of the v a s attached to the document and you fill it out and you send it back through the same postal service  had mailbox address and was communicating in the v a and then yes the veterans which goes off the grid sort of speak and and doesn't prosecute the claim because there are conditions real conditions were not minimizing them at all and then comes back later and yes there are cases in lost that are available to the doctor and to try to help that and obtain the most maximum benefits possible under the system you know given everything else the constraints of what those those  things like has been suggested all five petitions about this court's recent decision or color decision one of those cases are affected here the duty to assess the duty to help all those things survive this rule making simply about trying to make it easier for and some respects really it is easier for the veteran to go back to your example let me give you an example of we recently had a case where the veteran claimed stomach problems and the v a took the pain in that that didn't include irritable bowel syndrome but a veteran doesn't necessarily know what of specific diagnosis as cell what if the veteran writes stomach problems on this form could the v a now say that anything that doesn't you know fall within just a very small version of generic stomach problems is is now completely excluded because the form of no no no  and once again no the the reference that all five to rely upon the rule making in the commentary was to distinguish between the situation in which somebody comes in who is seeking benefits the claim for in the condition and they may just describe it as in the condition and that's another part of the record we've explained that in the specificity part for the energy which was challenged discussed up in boston you're not required to problem is within the scope of what the v a is supposed to do to try to figure out what's wrong i know that talking about your honor and there was some argument about some medical reason why your above all sorts in the end was unrelated to the stomach it's beyond me but claim for needs and is having it adjudicated in developed and as part of that adjudication says my private doctor has an documents here go get them as the v a does under fifty one of three capital a they go out and ask the doctor could you please bring the medical files for patients that those medical files come in and they're all about the need and then there's this one document where the patient were claimant over and five years earlier to complain about his shoulder ok there's no claim for shoulders never been in this just in by the claimant that he's ever seeking any relief from the shoulder what the v a was concerned about was that would put some onus on the v a to somehow create a claim for shoulders when there's been no claim made that going back to what that doesn't mean that simply through the process of development where something comes in and it has nothing absolutely nothing to do with your claim or can't be art arguably related to your claim if it could be arguably related to the claim then it would be within the scope but if it can't be then the v a s ninth doesn't have a duty at that point to somehow have done something with respect to that extraneous reference that's sort of the genesis of the comment and everyone thought i think in the ballpark the developer people they have to come to him i mean i think most russians know they can describe what's bothering me i mean something's wrong in my legs are working or my heart beats weird you know that's all they have to destroy identify what it is and many of these cases of bend to the doctor and had some sort of diagnosis about whatever it is that they have and and those folks obviously can just state well i went to the doctor and he says i have this and i think it's now folks who are undergoing mental problem and having mental issues you know that's always going to be a challenge for everybody in both sides and hopefully they have help but when they don't have an article in the going to when they don't have a try to go in help them figure out what exactly ed it was part of the information that they agency had considered in the room meaning it would have been presented i know that members of congress apparently have requested it and it has not been provided to them either so i honestly have no information on what the status of  is except that you know we don't know how many claims or all those normal questions that you might have to check against it to check your data against we have no way to answer them because we don't know what the raw numbers were or what the report was that was provided i can tell you from our houston service officer however that they have monthly meetings apparently in houston and apparently the there has not been any great improvement in the processing numbers in houston itself which i thought was sort of interesting just to get back to him with on the differences amongst our ourselves on our representation of our members and other veterans nationwide and the use of this form has created an unforseen consequences where the v a in order to clarify the form is contacting represented veterans without contacting their representatives and then either modifying their appeals and in some cases withdrawing their appeals unofficial have spoken to attorneys who practice in this area as well probably doesn't matter whether the veteran is represented by  s or by an attorney within the system so you have sort of this off the record ex parte contact going on which then means change the course of the appeal not the stories i've heard about from my service officer to the instances i should say  does a lot in a lot of areas a lot of times this wrong making was overlap with another will linking for what they call the regulation rewrite project so there is always a huge agency there's always on going on which i think also means that maybe sometimes things get aust in the haste to do things in a particular way and so these are the issues we wanted to bring to the court's attention because i think they were either overlooked or unintended yet i believe them to how veterans are able to prosecute their claims an appeals court has no further questions we