MILES PARKS, HOST:
Companies around the country have been hitting disabled military veterans with big bills, sometimes 10- or $20,000. That is even though the VA has said the service they provide should be free, and their actions could be illegal. But so far, nobody is stopping them. Chris Arnold, with NPR's investigations team has been looking into this, along with reporter Leah Rosenbaum from the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse, which covers the American military. They join me now. Hi to you both.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Hey, Miles.
LEAH ROSENBAUM: Hi.
PARKS: So these are companies, Chris, that charge veterans to help them file disability claims. As you report, this has led to some critics calling them claim sharks. But helping people, especially veterans, navigate a pretty complicated bureaucratic system seems like a good thing. What is the issue?
ARNOLD: The issue is that there is a federal law that says that you cannot charge veterans money for help preparing initial disability claims, and that's to protect them from getting gouged and taken advantage of. Basically, the help is supposed to be free, and anybody who offers it is supposed to be accredited by the VA. And there are nonprofits like the American Legion or VFW, and they offer the service for free.
But some vets who we spoke with said that they didn't know about the free help, or they tried to go the free route, but it wasn't that helpful. So they decided to work with one of these companies. And we should say, too, though, that, I mean, some vets who did work with these companies did get help, but the companies are charging a lot of money. I mean, the bill can be like 10- or $20,000. Sometimes that could be for, like, 5 hours worth of work. And so it's kind of like the Wild West out there right now without any really effective oversight.
PARKS: Right, so, Leah, you looked into this oversight question specifically. Has the VA done anything to try to police this?
ROSENBAUM: Well, Chris said it's like a Wild West out there, and that's pretty much exactly what we found. We filed a Freedom of Information Act request, and we found that the VA sent warning letters to more than 40 different companies over the past 10 years. And the issue is that they don't really have the power to enforce anything. There's a loophole in the federal law that says that while it might be illegal, there's no punishment. So these letters are pretty much just being ignored.
Plus a lot of these companies say that they're not breaking the law and vets want their services. We talked to Josh Smith. He's the CEO of Veteran Benefits Guide, one of the biggest claim consulting companies.
JOSH SMITH: They still have the free option. We just want them to have the options to have another choice in how they want to pursue their claim. We're not a bad actor. We're helping veterans.
PARKS: So, Chris, you actually looked in, dug in and looked at the business practices of specifically one of these companies. What did you find?
ARNOLD: Yeah, we looked at - Trajector Medical is the name of the company, and it's based in Florida. And like a lot of the outfits out there, it tells vets, look, we're only going to charge you money if we succeed in getting you benefits, which sounds like a good deal.
But a complaint that we heard a fair bit was that vets will start working with the company, and then some of them will get frustrated, and be like, look, I don't think this company is really doing that much to help me. Forget it. I'm just going to do this myself. Or they find out, oh, wait, there's a nonprofit that will do this for free. I'm going to work with them, and they'll file a disability claim that way. But then mysteriously, they'd get a bill from Trajector when they got awarded disability benefits.
Dustin is a former Army Ranger who we spoke to, and he didn't want to use his last name 'cause he feared retribution from the company.
DUSTIN: This company somehow knew that I received disability with having no access to my records and sent me a bill for $4,500.
PARKS: That's kind of spooky, isn't it? I mean, how could a company possibly know that?
ARNOLD: Right. And we didn't know either, and none of the veterans who we spoke with knew the answer to that question, either. But by talking to a bunch of former workers at the company, we figured out what it's been doing is it dials into a VA 800 number. It's, like, a disability hotline number, and it's meant for veterans. And you dial in, and it says, you know, here's what your check will be this month type thing.
And Trajector uses a computerized robo-dialer system that they call call-bot, and it's constantly checking on tens of thousands of veterans who have signed up to be customers at some point and entering their Social Security numbers and birth dates. And if it finds that somebody just got awarded benefits - it can be a little down the road, too, that the company automatically sends a bill. And that can happen even when, like in Dustin's case - we just heard from Dustin - you know, a vet like him didn't feel like the company was the reason that he was awarded benefits. Here's Dustin.
DUSTIN: I think that they took advantage of me, and they accessed the VA database to find out if I had a claim so they could make $4,500 from a guy who spent 5 1/2 years in the Army and two tours in Afghanistan.
ARNOLD: Now, Trajector says it's not doing anything wrong. It discloses its practices to veterans, and it says, any dissatisfied customers should contact them.
PARKS: Well, Leah, you mentioned that the VA has trouble policing this generally, but this reporting is getting the attention of Congress this week, right?
ROSENBAUM: Yeah, a bipartisan group of lawmakers cited our reporting. They sent a letter to VA, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission asking them to hold these companies accountable. We spoke with Congressman Chris Pappas. He's a Democrat from New Hampshire, and he's been aware of this for a while. He's actually sponsored some legislation to crack down on these companies. He said he's alarmed about the tactics we uncovered, like this callbot system that monitors vets, and other companies are also using some similar systems.
CHRIS PAPPAS: What's really clear from the reporting and what we've heard directly from veterans is that this is predatory in nature, that veterans are forking over a huge amount of money for this. It's shameful, it's outrageous, and we've got to do something about it.
ROSENBAUM: But there's also another bill in Congress right now that would legitimize these companies. It would put a price cap on what they can charge, but where to set that price cap is kind of contentious. Companies are lobbying to have that cap set at more than $10,000. Some critics, though, say that it should be way lower than that. So lawmakers will need to decide, if you're going to charge veterans, how much is too much?
PARKS: That's Leah Rosenbaum of the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse and NPR's Chris Arnold. Thanks to you both.
ROSENBAUM: Thank you.
ARNOLD: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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