This story — a considerably private one — begins as many do these days, with an unsolicited textual content message from an unknown quantity.
For those who’re something like me, then you definately would in all probability react a lot as I did when the textual content from “468311” got here in early one morning final week.
“Afghanistan Veteran: You’re doubtless eligible for VA month-to-month compensation. Go to VA.gov/PACT or name 1-800-698-2411 & press 8, then 2,” the message learn, the quantity and web site hyperlinked.
You couldn’t pay me to answer that textual content message or click on that hyperlink deal with and cellphone quantity, not to mention trick me with a promise or “compensation.” I could have as soon as been credulous sufficient to commit probably the most well-known of the “classic blunders” by voluntarily involving myself in a land warfare in Asia, however I wasn’t going to be fooled by a phisher, a smisher, a spoofer, or no matter else these con artists are at the moment referred to as.
Not right this moment, scammers, I assumed to myself, mentally including the form of expletives fairly anticipated from a former sergeant of army police.
The quantity appeared acquainted, although. It appeared an terrible lot just like the precise quantity for the Division of Veterans Affairs. As any modern-day journalist may, I turned to the Google for solutions.
That quantity was the VA’s. The website, too. I’d actually served in Afghanistan. I’ve written in regards to the PACT Act — the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Tackle Complete Toxics Act of 2022 — I knew that was actual.
It’s a reasonably well-researched con, then, I instructed myself.
With out clicking the certain-to-be rip-off textual content message, I referred to as the Division of Veterans Affairs straight. If somebody was making an attempt to cheat veterans they’d in all probability wish to know.
“Is that this a rip-off?” I requested.
“That’s not a rip-off,” the precise human who answered the cellphone on the VA mentioned. He couldn’t see my seen confusion.
Genuinely shocked — I could have even scoffed — I countered with one thing alongside the traces of “you’re telling me the VA is definitely reaching out to veterans to encourage them to enroll in incapacity advantages?”
I’d been a VFW post officer. I’d heard the warfare tales, and never those in regards to the battlefields, however towards the federal government bureaucrat-boogeymen who appeared intent on standing in the best way of earned post-service companies. It couldn’t be true.
“Sure, we’re,” the VA worker mentioned.
I didn’t wish to get that man in hassle for speaking to me — not for speaking to a veteran, that’s actually his job, however to a journalist, which most authorities workers aren’t allowed. I reached out to his bosses.
Based on the Biden Administration’s Assistant Secretary at the Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs, Adam Farina, the textual content message is a part of a brand new “paradigm shift at VA” pushed by President Joe Biden and VA Secretary Denis McDonough.
“We’ve got been given one mandate: inform veterans of the advantages obtainable to them and get them within the door for companies,” he instructed me. “It’s an all-hands-on-deck outreach effort. The primary in VA historical past, and definitely the most important in VA historical past, to get veterans to return to us.”
The textual content I’d obtained wasn’t the primary the Division had despatched. The veterans of Vietnam, whose publicity to Agent Orange is now presumed beneath the PACT Act, have been contacted to use for advantages in July. Those that served in Desert Storm have been contacted after that. Afghanistan veterans are being contacted now, with Iraq Warfare vets to comply with.
Thus far, 3 million veterans have obtained such a textual content message, Farina mentioned, with extra to return.
“All of these efforts are focused at veterans who aren’t at the moment receiving care or compensation at VA,” Farina mentioned. “We wish them to return to VA for the care and advantages they deserve.”
The VA has additionally hosted greater than 800 stay outreach occasions since March (together with one at Gillette Stadium), and launched a nationwide promoting marketing campaign titled “What You Earned,” which goals to make veterans conversant in tangible VA advantages like low- or no-cost healthcare, no-money-down mortgages, and no-cost memorial and burial companies.
The outreach is working, Farina mentioned. Greater than 410,000 Veterans have enrolled for VA care over the past yr, the most important enrollment leap since 2017. Because the PACT Act was signed into law in 2022, he mentioned, practically three-quarters of 1,000,000 Veterans have enrolled in VA well being care, a greater than 33% enhance in comparison with an identical interval from earlier than the laws was signed.
The VA has obtained 4.4 million claims for compensation within the final two years alone, and 1.7 million of these fall beneath the PACT acts “presumed conditions” checklist, which makes it simpler for veterans to tie their accidents to their service.
“The explanation for that is now we have discovered that veterans who come to VA do higher,” Farina mentioned. “We wish them to return to VA, and that mandate has permeated via the Division, and we’re simply crushing the data.”
Proper now, Farina mentioned, extra veterans are receiving incapacity advantages and care via the VA than ever earlier than. This fiscal yr alone, VA has awarded $137 billion in advantages to greater than 6.7 million veterans.
Aside from, after all, this procrastination-prone former noncommissioned officer, or I wouldn’t have gotten that textual content message.
I’ll need to get on prime of that. For those who obtained or get that textual content message, properly, you in all probability ought to too. It actually isn’t a rip-off (this time).
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