Last week, a bill in the Florida legislature aimed at reeling in unaccredited claims companies passed unanimously in a key committee.

By Bruce Carruthers, Vietnam Veteran and VHPI Steering Committee Member In the recent book These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs – and Wrecks – America, authors Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner detail how corporate control of an increasingly large swath of the U.S.

By Russell B. Lemle, PhD, Senior Policy Analyst Last week, ProPublica, published an article purporting to expose “How the VA Fails Veterans on Mental Health.” In fact, the story ignored crucial context, omitted larger realities, and used isolated anecdotes to unfairly assail the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

By Russell Lemle, originally on Military.com In the VA’s recently released National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, which covered 2020 to 2021, the suicide rate among women veterans jumped 24.1 percent — far greater than the 6.3 percent increase among male veterans.

By Russell Lemle and Suzanne Gordon, originally in Washington Monthly In 2014, Congress passed the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act, which set up a temporary program that outsourced veterans’ care from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to private sector providers.

By Russell Lemle, originally in Task & Purpose Last week, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a meticulous study that showed veterans have a higher likelihood of dying if they choose care in the community rather than Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals.

By Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early, originally in Jacobin Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the often-hidden wound of war. Post-9/11 wars added hundreds of thousands of former service members to the patient rolls of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) — the nation’s largest public health care system — to get treatment for anger and depression, substance abuse, suicidal ideation, and past exposure to military sexual trauma.

A recent article in The New York Times provides a poignant example of the problems faced by veterans with Other than Honorable (OTH) discharges. Hundreds of thousands of service members who have mental or physical problems acquired or exacerbated by military service are given such discharges as punishment. Veterans who receive a bad paper discharge are not only denied access to VA healthcare, but are also ineligible for any other benefits, including veteran preference when applying for a job.

On November 16th, the VA released its annual National Veteran Suicide Prevention Report, analyzing data and factors associated with US veterans who died by suicide in 2021.

By Paul Sullivan In 2011, a mother in distress phoned me about her son who had just returned from the war in Iraq.

By Paul Sullivan Thanks to bipartisan work in Congress and the President’s signature in August 2022, the PACT Act became law. Since then, a tide of more than a million disability claims have been submitted by veterans to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).