The Department of Veterans’ Affairs Should Wipe Out Veteran Debt
The Department of Veteran’s Affairs recently, as of October 1, 2021, put a plan in place to begin again collecting the debt owed to them by some 600,000 veterans. The VA has determined that they will place those individuals into a 36 month fixed sum repayment plan which will be deduced directly from their entitlement benefits.
The VA reports that those 600,000 veterans owe, collectively, about $1.13 billion in debts to the VA. This amounts to just shy of $1900 per person in debt owed from overpayments of entitlement benefits and previously uncollected medical co-pays.
As a veteran who knows many other veterans, I can tell you confidently that not a single veteran who has utilized their education benefits or receives disability compensation has not been overpaid. It’s not a matter of if a veteran will be incorrectly compensated by the VA, but when. I recall a colleague from the Army telling a story once about how he received multiple letters from the VA demanding a repayment of a a debt he had incurred. The debt amounted to less than $1.00 in total.
And this is the crux of the problem, the VA is inefficient. While this is not an article on government bureaucracy, the department is a part of the government nonetheless. A government which has never been known for its wise use of funds.
