In mid-July, leaked internal documents from the Department of Veterans Affairs revealed that 238,000 veterans died before their health care and disability claims were processed or resolved. This report prompted the VA Inspector General to investigate the issue further–and discover that the situation is much worse than anyone imagined.

Out of 800,000 records stuck in limbo in the VA’s system, 307,000 of them belonged to military veterans who had died before receiving any treatment at all. The Inspector General also found that in the last five years, VA staffers deleted and incorrectly marked 10,000 veteran benefits applications.

The VA relies on the National Cemetery Administration and the Veteran Benefits Administration to collect death data and trim the backlog. Thanks to a computer system breakdowns and internal policy changes, however, death certificates, burial applications and insurance claims were lost. Countless files became stuck in the system, including one veteran whose insurance claim sat in VA computers for 14 years after death.

If the VA cannot distinguish living veterans from the dead, it cannot prioritize its claims based on need or urgency. Many combat veterans have thus lost their five-year eligibility waiting for their paperwork to go through.

VA employee Scott Davis brought this issue to Congress’ attention a year ago and leaked the documents to the press in July. “People who fought, and who earned the right to VA health care were never given VA health care,” Davis said. “They literally died while waiting for VA to process their health care application.”