Washington Post Publishes Misleading Report on VA Benefits
In a recently published series, the Washington Post purports to expose “brazen fraud” among untold numbers of military veterans who, they claim, lie about their war-wounds and cynically “milk the system” for unearned benefits. It was hyped as a major investigative project, and yet ultimately the reporters behind the much-ballyhooed project tallied up only a few million dollars of fraud here and there. They note that the VA’s Office of Inspector General refers around 50 cases a year to prosecutors for potential benefits fraud, a drop in the bucket of the VA’s $193 billion benefits system that includes more than 5 million veterans. While the Post series claims the VA benefits system is “prone to rampant exaggeration and fraud,” it later acknowledges that most claims are “legitimate.”
Of course, deception of any sort within the VA benefits system should be discouraged, and, when uncovered, punished. And perhaps the VA watchdog would uncover more fraud if it had greater resources. Sadly, the series is yet another example of an unfortunate trend of VA coverage – cherry-picking anecdotes rather than sticking with the data. In so doing, the reporters present a false image of a benefits system that is far too generous and too easy to exploit, when, in fact, many veterans receiving benefits are still struggling mightily to pay the bills. Moreover, many veterans with legitimate military-related ailments are constantly seeing their well-substantiated requests for disability unfairly denied – which, in turn, often lead to protracted and frustrating legal appeals, and many deserving veterans giving up entirely.
The series also minimizes significant problems that veterans have. We will report more fully on this as we follow the other articles The Post plans on publishing in the coming days or weeks.
The Post expresses its most fiery condemnation through quotes given by Daniel Gade, a conservative ideologue who, in his past writing, has bemoaned the growth of what he calls the “disability-industrial complex.” As VHPI Senior Policy Analyst Suzanne Gordon has previously written, Gade has controversially claimed that the VA “‘robs veterans of their vitality,” privileges ‘lifetime disability and malaise over recovery in mental and physical health,’ and spawns a ‘culture of entitlement’ among veterans and a pernicious ‘network of enablers.’” For the Post to provide a platform for Gade and his warped worldview is irresponsible and risks jeopardizing the vital social safety net veterans have fought for and the VA has built over generations. Again, stay tuned for further analyses of these articles!
