Veterans became eligible for billions. These firms saw a chance to profit.
Source: Washington Post
VETERANS, INC.
Veterans became eligible for billions. These firms saw a chance to profit.
Despite a federal law that prohibits charging veterans for help in applying for disability benefits, for-profit companies are making millions.
By Lisa Rein
May 23, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT
Senators savored the moment on a summer day outside the Capitol — the passage of a sweeping, bipartisan agreement to add $280 billion in new benefits and health care for millions of veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. ... More than a year after taking effect, the Honoring our Pact Act has proved enormously popular. This week, President Biden announced that more than 1 million disability claims have been approved under the new law.
But glitches, slowdowns and other mishaps have dogged the program’s rollout by the Department of Veterans Affairs, enabling the growth of an unregulated shadow industry that promises to drastically boost tax-free disability checks, according to lawmakers, advocates and leaders in the claims industry — in exchange for veterans signing away thousands of dollars in future benefits.
Despite a federal law that prohibits charging veterans for help in applying for compensation for wartime injuries, as many as 100 unaccredited, for-profit companies now are making hundreds of millions of dollars, a Washington Post review found. The overwhelmed veterans agency says the government is all but powerless to stop the practice, particularly since Congress years ago stripped criminal penalties from the law. And now a cadre of mostly Republican lawmakers is pushing to do away with the restrictions altogether, a plan bankrolled by a well-funded industry group led by a former high-ranking Trump administration VA official.
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Veterans, Inc.
This story is part of a series examining an unprecedented increase in veterans benefits in recent years.
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Interviews with current and former employees, VA officials and court documents reveal a booming industry that charges veterans anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000 for help filing disability claims that by law should be free. Many former service members are enticed by aggressive online and TV sales pitches from the largely veteran-led groups that promise a success rate of up to 90 percent in boosting benefits.
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Aaron Schaffer, Alice Crites, Razzan Nakhlawi and Monika Mathur contributed to this report.
By Lisa Rein
Lisa Rein covers federal agencies and the management of government in the Biden administration. At The Washington Post, she has written about the federal workforce; state politics and government in Annapolis, and in Richmond; local government in Fairfax County, Va.; and the redevelopment of Washington and its neighborhoods. Twitter https://twitter.com/Reinlwapo
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/23/va-benefits-for-profit-companies-pact-act/
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Dfollars to donuts.. those shysters are repuke donors and buggger all will be done to correct the situation .
The overwhelmed veterans agency says the government is all but powerless to stop the practice, particularly since Congress years ago stripped criminal penalties from the law. And now a cadre of mostly Republican lawmakers is pushing to do away with the restrictions altogether, a plan bankrolled by a well-funded industry group led by a former high-ranking Trump administration VA official.
