A Billionaire Tries Again to Hijack Veterans’ Care

If there’s one thing hedge fund titan Steven Cohen is known for, it’s rising from the ashes. A decade ago, Cohen worked feverishly to recover from a notorious Wall Street scandal. Now, he’s aiming to ram through a damaging veterans mental health bill that was summarily quashed in President Trump’s first term.

In 2016, Cohen launched a philanthropic project. Drawing on his Marine son’s deployment to Afghanistan, he founded the Cohen Veterans Network (CVN)—a chain of outpatient clinics delivering comprehensive, evidence-based mental health treatment to post-9/11 veterans, service members, and their families. He initially committed $275 million of his own money, offering free care for those who lacked the means to pay for it.

Veterans advocates were deeply skeptical. Rick Weidman, then the executive director of Policy and Government Affairs at Vietnam Veterans of America, concluded, “This guy was in hot water … And suddenly he thinks, ‘Okay let me figure out what to do to up my image,’ and he starts the Cohen Veterans Network.”

The VA’s “community care” privatization program was then ramping up, with the department increasingly purchasing private care when veterans faced clinical delays or significant travel times. Most private providers were content with the established outsourcing guidelines. But not Cohen. He wanted to serve as a larger player in the veterans treatment landscape.

Senior Policy Analyst Russell Lemle and Reporting Fellow Jasper Craven unpack the latest billionaire ploy to undermine veteran care in The American Prospect.