Harder To Get Help: Sacramento makes it more difficult for veterans

By Juwon Nichols. Read it in LA Downtown News.

Earlier this year, California lawmakers made it illegal for fee-based companies to help veterans claim health benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Two prominent Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs), the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and Disabled American Veterans (DAV), also support federal legislation that would crack down on the same companies nationwide.

These groups insist that no veteran should have to pay a fee to file a claim. Maybe not, but for veterans like me — an Air Force National Guard vet living in Los Angeles — the dubious benefit of that high-minded declaration is that we pay no fee to file a claim, wait forever, and then receive no benefits.

In my case, DAV delayed my casework for more than a year while I was making regular payments to the organization. Earlier this summer, I learned directly from the VA that my claim had been denied again. Whatever DAV calls those payments, it does not call them fees, because the organization opposes charging veterans for claims assistance. Regardless, I certainly was not receiving value from them. I have since dropped DAV as my representative.

And the VFW? They’re not focused on veterans. Instead, they’re playing political football in Washington.

All things considered, I’m one of the lucky ones. My military career was spent domestically supporting bases that sent tens of thousands overseas after 9/11. My injuries weren’t exacerbated by having to send brothers and sisters into harm’s way, or wondering if an approaching child was a human bomb. But I do have injuries, and the accredited VSOs have left me feeling a bit let down, just like they’ve let down so many of my comrades.

Could a fee-based veteran service provider have done better than the disappointing service I received? It’s possible. But now, in a frenzy to crack down on “claims sharks” who charge vulnerable vets and then skip town, California has left all of us who served with nowhere to turn. It’s now illegal to charge, so “off-label” VSOs go out of business. Meanwhile, the nonprofit VSOs have not exactly stepped up to fill the gap.

So we have a needlessly complicated process, made even more complicated by this new gatekeeping from Sacramento. And I’m sick of it.

California is home to over 1.2 million veterans. I know their plight well, and not just from being one. I have PTSD from a Basic Training fall and injury that put me in the hospital, as well as from related abuse from a superior. I was also a DoD liaison to the VA, where I watched veterans who put their lives on the line, sometimes over multiple deployments, be put in line instead of prioritized.

I know, both personally and professionally, how messed up the VA is. That’s why I had hoped the VFW and other traditional VSOs would step in once California banned fee-based services.

Instead, the VFW marched to Capitol Hill and wreaked havoc. There, Congress has been debating a veterans’ aid bill that, granted, is not perfect. It doesn’t include coverage for tinnitus (which, again, I have) and pulls funding from future veteran care to pay for today’s care. Nothing in Washington ever is perfect, and if a veterans advocacy group has objections, that’s okay.

But here’s where the VFW jumped the shark. It didn’t focus on advocating for improvements. It instead said, in a politically fraught environment, that dozens of good improvements weren’t good enough. Kill the bill, the VFW demanded, no matter how much good it could do for our servicemen.

It should go without saying that none of this helped veterans, especially in California, where many of us struggle to afford the cost of living while dealing with mental and physical challenges. The VA process is broken, and the DAV and VFW are not helping to improve it.

I raised my right hand just before 9/11 and went to Basic shortly thereafter. I know what today’s veterans need, and it’s not VSO showboating. It’s real help to move forward for themselves and their families.

California never should have banned fee-based providers. The VFW and DAV never should have supported it. But now it’s the law...so where is the VFW?

Juwon Nichols is a former lecturer at the University of Southern California’s Dornsife College. He was previously a program manager for the U.S. Department of Defense and a member of the Air Force National Guard.