Brits deal with veterans’ false claims
Common Sense sends us a link to the UK’s Daily Mail in regards to false claims clogging up their Ministry of Defense’ ability to pay legitimate disability claims;
The volume of claims has been partly blamed on ‘ambulance chasing’ lawyers and the Ministry of Defence, which publicises the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme through adverts and YouTube videos.
Law firms such as Military Lawyers 4U and Harris Fowler advertise their services in military magazines. They have specialist teams to take cases on a no-win, no-fee basis, but who charge up to 25 per cent of a soldier’s potential payout.
In 2005, when the compensation scheme was introduced, only 365 troops made personal injury claims. By 2011-12 that figure had rocketed to 8,815, more than a quarter of which were rejected.
The article says that out of 36,000 claims in the past several years, 11,000 have been rejected indicating that almost a third are attempts at gaming the system. I shudder to think what that might be extrapolated into numbers in the US.
Category: Veterans Issues
Quadruple that number, easily. And when it is pointed out to the VA, the bureaucrats form a duh look..
streetsweeper: quadruple (44,000)? You’re almost certainly way low. I’d guess that there are easily that many bogus or inflated PTSD claims alone, and probably more.
At the end of Sep 2011, 3,422,674 individuals were receiving VA disability compensation. The total is doubtless close to or over 3.5 million now.
If 11/36 = 30.56% of those are receiving VA compensation illegitimately, that works out to well over 1 million.
I don’t think the total number is quite that high. But from what we’ve seen here at TAH IMO it’s not out of the question, either.