The Department of Veterans Affairs is apologizing to a veteran who received a voicemail from a facility in El Paso Texas, in which VA employees can be heard speculating that the veteran was seeking to retain his 100% disability rating, when one of them says, “It’s all about the money.”
“VA deeply apologizes to this Veteran, and we are reaching out to him immediately,” VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes told Task & Purpose on Tuesday. “The lack of care and compassion demonstrated by these employees is unacceptable, and we are urgently investigating this incident — and will take swift and appropriate action. Veterans deserve respect and the very best care our nation has to offer, and we at VA will never accept anything less from our employees.”
It is unclear exactly when the call took place. An audio recording of the voice message was first posted to Instagram on Monday. The name of the patient and the El Paso VA employee calling were both edited out of the recording. It appears the VA employee was unaware that she had failed to hang up after leaving a brief message asking the veteran to call her back.
In the brief conversation, a male VA employee, who is not identified, asks the female employee if the veteran needs to come in for a pulmonary exam, prompting the woman to check the patient’s diagnosis.
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Then the male employee says: “Yeah, it’s all about the money. Trust me, I know this.”
The woman responds by saying the man is “100%,” a likely reference to his disability rating. She adds that he’s “probably trying to keep it.”
“There’s so much stuff going on in the VA that he thinks he’s going to lose his disability,” the male VA employee says. “And again, he probably wants travel pay, too.”
“Oh yeah,” the female VA employee replies. “I’ve heard people get mad about that. Their travel pay was incorrect [garbled audio] and I’m like: ‘We didn’t have anything to do with that. Calm down.’”
Task & Purpose has been unable to reach the Instagram user who posted the audio of the conversation.
So far in 2024, the VA has delivered $187 billion in benefits to 6.7 million veterans and survivors, according to the VA. The percentage of living veterans who are receiving disability veterans has also risen from 18% in 2014 to 33% today.
But like any other organization, there have been times when the VA has faced public scrutiny and criticism. A VA employee in Georgia was suspended indefinitely without pay after he body-slammed a 73-year-old veteran in 2022. The following year, VA claims processors told NBC News they were struggling to keep up with the new cases after the PACT Act expanded benefits for veterans who had been exposed to toxins.