@washingtonpost @DeptVetAffairs @DAVHQ This is my reply based on observation, knowledge, facts and lived experience. 1/2 A series of reports published by The Washington Post beginning in October 2025 sparked significant controversy surrounding the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) disability compensation system. The investigation alleged that the rapid rise in disability ratings is driven, in part, by “manipulative tactics” from for-profit consultants and coaches who encourage veterans to exaggerate their ailments. That’s bullshit. Fuck you. Yes, there is some fraud and abuse in the VA disability system. No system is immune to that. But the reality is that the VA disability system is incredibly difficult to navigate. I’ve known people who were severely disabled by service-related injuries or illnesses who are sitting at 10% or 40% because of paperwork mistakes, language conflicts, or because they filed the wrong form after being told by the VA itself that it was the correct one. I know people who have used the wrong word during an evaluation or happened to go in on a relatively decent day and had their rating reduced. Two days later, they were right back to being the same person whose condition justified the original rating—but now they’re just as fucked up with a lower rating than they deserve. Situations like that are far more common than veterans scamming the system. The truth is, this system is incredibly hard to navigate. Securing an appropriate rating is already an uphill battle, and gaming the system is even harder. From my experience, the biggest reason ratings have increased in recent years is simple: a massive number of veterans are getting older. The conditions that were rated at 30% or 40% ten or fifteen years ago have worsened and, in many cases, have become completely debilitating. Compensation is their lifeline. It's the only thing keeping them from being JUST ANOTHER HOMELESS VETERAN I know a lot of disabled veterans, and not a single one of them is faking anything. In fact, most have lower ratings than they should. Many don’t even realize they can request increases as their conditions worsen. Others are afraid to try because they fear someone will screw it up and they’ll end up with a decrease instead. BTW, we're not just talking money we're talking veterans who are desperately in need of appropriate healthcare. Wait times have doubled and tripled over the last year or so. Mental health, physical health, everything health. And there’s another issue people rarely talk about: there are too many doctors and medical professionals doing these assessments who are either incompetent, indifferent, or both. They can screw a veteran over for weeks, months, years, or even a lifetime. Obtaining appropriate VA disability compensation is a complicated, often exhausting process. It is not easy. Not by any stretch. When these articles refered to people assisting veterans as “coaches” or use similarly loaded language, what they’re often really describing are people telling veterans what it takes to avoid screwing themselves over—or getting screwed over by incompetent medical personnel or the occasional clueless VA employee or rater. And for the record, the vast majority of people working within the VA system—service personnel, claims processors, and medical staff—are doing everything they can under an overwhelming workload, despite what this administration has piled onto them. Veterans need more support, not hiring freezes, and not people being fired or laid off because of the color of their skin or the sound of their name. Because of this administration, the VA is down tens of thousands of vital personnel. (To include more than 500 doctors and 1,000 nurses). To make the numbers look better, they hid unfilled positions behind a hiring freeze, effectively making desperately needed roles disappear from the active count. On top of that, they eliminated (next)
