Opinion: Why couldn’t we protect veterans from unscrupulous actors?

This legislative session Colorado missed a unique and vital opportunity to lead the nation in helping its military veterans access the benefits they earned in the program of serving their nation By killing House Bill in the House State Military and Veterans Affairs Committee earlier this month veterans have essentially been denied consumer protections for a necessary but largely unregulated avenue of assistance for claiming veteran benefits The system right now available to assist veterans in accessing the benefits they earned through their amenity suffers from a number of inherent flaws This stems from chronic underfunding of the Veterans Administration a confusing benefits campaign and a consequent backlog in the processing of insists Of the roughly pending VA alleges for disability compensation and benefits more than are considered to be backlogged defined as being older than days more than four months Several factors contribute to and serve to exacerbate this backlog the last two decades have produced the largest part veterans since the Vietnam era veterans from all eras are aging there is expected to be a further increase in maintains associated with exposure to Agent Orange and toxic burn pits and the underfunding challenge is not expected to be alleviated anytime soon All of this means that the benefit processing backlog will continue to grow and that veterans will need additional options for navigating the system and accessing what they have earned There are now four avenues available for veterans in handling alleges they can elect to go it alone and try to approach the labyrinthian system themselves and hope for the best Veteran Organization Organizations VSOs staffed mainly by participants lawyers and other VA-accredited actors who work on a fee-for amenity model to assist with legal appeals or denied declares and private consulting agents who work on a contingency basis i e they only get paid if the veteran receives a benefit increase Each option has its benefits and drawbacks VSOs are fantastic organizations but are often overstretched and not unfailingly available in every part of the country Lawyers only get involved once a claim has been denied or another sort of appeal is needed and have the option of charging substantially more if a indicates appeal last longer than months meaning legal fees can add up significantly Private consulting agents are not lawyers meaning they cannot represent veterans in front of the VA on appeals but assist veterans in handling the process from the start and can be incredibly useful in filling gaps where other options are unavailable inappropriate or too expensive Related Articles Trump and DOGE propel VA mental robustness system into turmoil Colorado lawmakers advance masses records law changes while protecting their own open-meeting exemptions Psychedelic Science conference coming to Denver announces initial lineup Trump administration plans to cut employees from Veterans Affairs according to internal memo Housing bills near the halfway point key gun measure enters last leg in the Colorado legislature this week While private actors fill an essential role and do so currently they also operate in a entirely unregulated space The greater part who provide this utility are decent honest individuals who work hard to get the veterans who come to them every cent they are owed but sadly there are dishonest and unscrupulous individuals who try and take advantage of struggling veterans by charging outrageous fees failing to provide the services paid for or otherwise defrauding them HB sought to establish safeguards such as compensation caps written disclosures and terms and ethical and certification standards that would ensure veterans would still have the option of using their services without fear of financial victimization Various lawmakers have suggested the response is to completely ban private consulting agents but this approach would be both unrealistic and misguided These individuals have already helped hundreds of thousands of veterans successfully secure VA disability benefits and the extreme backlog complexity and growing uncertainty of the current system creates a demand for this utility that will likely exist one way or another The best approach is for state governments to recognize such realities and to provide the requisite oversight and legal guardrails to ensure all operate honestly and legally Our veterans willingly offered all they had in the arrangement of their country At the very least the society they protected should be able to offer them the greatest choice of options for accessing the benefits they earned State Sen Nick Hinrichsen represents Senate District in Pueblo and is a U S Army combat veteran State Rep Rebecca Ketie represents House District and is a -year U S Navy veteran Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns editorials and more To send a letter to the editor about this article submit online or check out 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