Failing to Serve America's Heroes on the Home Front

Brian Ross and Susan Schwartz's story titled "Failing to Serve America's Heroes on the Home Front" is full of inaccuracies, misinformation, disinformation, disgracefully misleading, and should be investigated. Who investigates the media? You produce stories and sound bites for the sole purpose of increasing your ratings, regardless of who you hurt, and how badly you hurt them in the process. In this story, the individuals you carelessly hurt the most are disabled veterans and their families, and those heroes proudly serving our country today. Rather than talk to disabled veterans and their families, individuals who dedicate their lives to representing and advocating on behalf of these individuals, you present a distorted picture based on statistics and reports that can be interpreted to present any story you wish, regardless of its validity. Your story reflects great discredit on the both of you and ABC news as well. It is evident that the truth is not important to you, the damage and hurt you cause to others is not important to you, the only thing that is important is sound bites and anything else you can do to improve your ratings. This is neither truth, nor is it news. This is spin to capture a headline that puts you on a so-called news show. As an individual who works for a non-profit organization that represents disabled veterans, I take great offense to your misleading story that ultimately hurts those who have sacrificed the most. Our disabled veterans, and active duty soldiers, for the sole purpose of getting time on what you call news. You can spin it anyway you wish as it is apparent you have no clue as to the subject matter, but the truth is disabled veterans and their families do not pay one cent throughout their life for the services we provide. Attorneys often charge huge fees to secure benefits for disabled veterans, and then take a significant percentage of retroactive payments due a veteran if they happen to win a claim. More often than not, however, they lose the claim because they have little experience with VA statutes and regulations. There is a reason for this inexperience. Until the Veterans Judicial Review Act in 1988 attorneys were prohibited from charging more than $10 to represent a disabled veteran. The reason for this is both Congress and our Nation did not wish to have attorneys profit from those who have lost limbs and suffered other catastrophic disabilities while serving our country. Although the statue changed in 1988 there was still no real financial incentive to represent disabled veterans, so few attorneys developed expertise in this field. Even today, when an attorney charges a contingency fee to represent a disabled veteran and then loses the case, and the veteran loses their money, they come to organizations like ours that win their cases, secure their monetary benefits and often-huge retroactive payments. The big difference is notwithstanding our success, unlike most attorneys we do not charge one cent for the services we provide throughout the veteran’s life, even if we secure hundreds of thousands of dollars in retroactive payments for the veteran.

If by chance an attorney does happen to win a case, it is likely they make more money off that one case, than my entire year’s salary. I am usually in my office by 7:00 a.m., work all day, only to come home and work at night, weekends, holidays, vacations, sick days, and any other time I have off to keep up with the increasing demand for our services. If there was any merit to your story “Failing to Serve America’s Heroes on the Home Front”, why would we continue to receive requests to serve more and more veterans and their families on a daily basis to the point we are almost on call 24 hours a day seven days a week? Why would we have clients who have remained with us for 20, 30, and 40 years or more? Clients have sent thousands of letters of gratitude because due to our efforts we helped them from losing their home, or helped them to get a home for the first time in their life. They have sent letters indicating how for the first time since they became disabled they are now able to support their families. Clients have sent an inestimable amount of letters expressing sincere gratitude for all our success on their behalf. It is us visiting these disabled veterans at their bedside in VA hospitals. It is not either of you, ABC, Charity Watch or any other group doing this. It is us who is there for the widows when a veteran passes away to assist them, not any of you. Because we do not charge any fees for anything we do, yes we rely heavily on the support of public donations to enable us to continue to provide the excellence service we provide to disabled veterans and their families. Based on your story and philosophy, is it your theory it would be better for disabled veterans and their families to pay huge sums of money for these services rather than have us provide these services free with the help of donations from the public? If one of your children became a disabled veteran would you, or would you want your child to page huge sums of money for the services we provide? Not only is your story a complete distortion, it is highly insulting to disabled veterans, those serving on active duty, individuals like myself that have little time to do anything but work to keep up with the demand. Also, individuals who work for organizations like the non-profit organization I work for must be a veteran to work in my position. Therefore, you have demonstrated the highest form of disrespect to all of us. Rather than speak in sound bites or try to grab a headline, I challenge you Mr. Ross and/or Ms. Schwartz to spend a few days with me working and visiting these disabled veterans at VA hospitals to take care of their needs, so you can get a glimpse of reality and produce a news story, rather than distorted sound bites that give you the opportunity to appear on television. As busy and as overwhelmed as I am I am willing to take the time to do so, are you? Or is integrity and truth in reporting something you and/or ABC do not believe in. No wonder so may people have lost faith in and do not trust the media. You are the problem but unwilling to play a part in the solution. Lastly, the fact that you are completely oblivious to run such a distorted story the very day before Veterans Day is not only a disgrace to veterans, the military and our Nation; it speaks volumes of your sensitivity, respect for veterans, integrity and credibility and that of ABC.