Derek Debus
@derek_debus
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Military, Veterans, and Firearms Law Attorney. Submarine Appraiser. Marine Infantry Veteran, former prosecutor, and recovering criminal defense attorney.
Arizona, USA
Joined August 2017
Credit where it’s due, @SecVetAffairs has directed his leadership to reach out to me directly to address this issue. Thank you, Secretary Collins, for your prompt response to this pressing issue!
Interesting that @DeptVetAffairs under @SecVetAffairs Doug Collins is trying to sever my client’s properly granted claims because, after digging through his records, they believe he requested his benefits on the “wrong form”. What. The. Hell.
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Interesting that @DeptVetAffairs under @SecVetAffairs Doug Collins is trying to sever my client’s properly granted claims because, after digging through his records, they believe he requested his benefits on the “wrong form”. What. The. Hell.
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“Fund the TSA! Fund the TSA!” Uh how about we abolish the TSA? They’ve never caught a single terrorist and airports can handle their own security theater performers at overall cheaper rates (with better service, I’d wager)
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My fan; they write!
@derek_debus FYI this guy is an attorney at one of those dirtbag law firms that specializes in VA benefits. When people are mad at fat losers getting lifetime disability for anxiety its guys like Derek here that likely made that possible
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Forget TSA lines, the real problem with air travel in the coming weeks is fuel. Some cargoes are already diverting toward the U.S. on a Jones Act waiver, so domestic travel might hold. Europe? Different story. About 1.77M barrels/day of jet fuel moves by oil tankers and it was
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The issue is this guy disagrees with how the law defines a “disability” for VA purposes. Because he disagree with it, he accuses everyone who utilizes the system of committing fraud. He’s too incalcitrant and sophomoric to realize or admit that his issue is with Congress and not
@BingoVibe1 @derek_debus I need to see less people who clearly shouldn't be on disability receiving disability. If this means licensed doctors nurses and such need to deny more claims, so be it. It's well known in military circles that if you're clever enough you can get your 100% once you're out.
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Straw man logic. Veterans aren’t mad that there’s a discussion on VA fraud. We are mad that people who didn’t serve claim ‘every veteran they know’ is scamming the VA.
The veterans who are mad that there’s even a discussion about VA disability reform are the same people who go to a dozen restaurants on Veterans Day to collect as many free-meals-for-vets as possible.
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@derek_debus @FastChase That seems to be a prolific weakness of society where people refuse information that could change their perception. Being right doesn't always mean you're correct. Moral failings IMO.
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The thing is your lack of service means that your views on how disabling military service can be on the human body are as relevant to this discussion as the price of peanuts in Peru. You simply don’t know what you’re talking about because you’ve never experienced it first hand.
@derek_debus Sorry, but "you didn't serve" is not an argument. Again, fraud is fraud. You don't need first hand experience to notice that every single military person on Caleb's show and every military person I know is on disability. If you want an allowance, lobby the government for it.
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as promised, here is the thread: https://t.co/3MhdmatBSk
As promised, let's talk about VA benefits. In this 🧵we will cover: ✅Purpose of VA benefits ✅How service connection and ratings work ✅How VA "math" works ✅Why VA compensation is different from civilian disability and why limiting it to only "combat" veterans is wrong ✅Why
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I also want to say that I don't think @sircalebhammer is a bad guy or anti-veteran. I think he just sees a system that doesn't intuitively make sense, compares it to other systems that do make intuitive sense, and has some reasonable questions based on those observations. I will
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So; TL;DR VA compensates veterans for what they think the average earnings impact of a disability will be, regardless of what the actual impact is on that veteran's earnings potential. Vets go through a lot, even during CONUS peacetime service, that civilian employers cannot do
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That's wrong and its harmful to Veterans and taxpayers to boot. So, if you are really, really hot-to-trot on what you believe is "VA disability fraud", you should urge your congressional critters to pass the GUARD VA Benefits Act to put these claims sharks out of business.
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These companies have no ethical, moral, or fiduciary obligation to their clients. They have no oversight or supervision or accountability to anyone but their own bottom line. And their whole shtick is to have their own rubber stamp MDs sign off on whatever will increase the
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Last year, the VA paid accredited attorneys about $380m in attorney's fees for our work helping veterans get the benefits they earned. ONE of these claims shark companies last year earned about $400m itself. Doing work that's entirely illegal and yet the VA and federal
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✅The problem with "claims sharks." While VA benefits fraud is sub 1%, it does happen. Every system has fraud -- every. single. one. But much of the fraud in the VA compensation space is perpetuated by unaccredited third party "consulting" companies who are incentivized to get
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✅Why limiting disability to "combat" vets is wrong. Well, for many of the reasons we just discussed, it's wrong. Training is dangerous and deadly (and unavoidable). Even the mandatory PT often leads to injuries and disabilities. People get hurt in training ALL THE TIME. If we
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So, we have the type of work that is prone to causing repetitive use/wear and tear injuries, no time to recover, and no substantive access to medical providers to keep nagging minor injuries from getting worse. And worse, a servicemember harmed by the negligence or ignorance of
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If you work construction, you're working a set shift, with proper protective equipment, at a job site that complies with OSHA. You get sick time, paid time off, and the ability to see whatever doctors you like to treat your aches and pains. The military isn't like that. You're
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So those are reasons why VA disability looks fraudulent. In the civilian world, no employer who breaks their employees at this rate would survive the litigation that would ensue. But we look at civilian laborers and wonder why they don't have the same rates of injury or
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