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Can Graham Platner survive another controversy? | NPR’s Newsmakers
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VA Benefits, Bureaucracy, and Advocating for Veterans
At 46:12 · chapter starts 42:20
Fadel raises a challenge from critics: if Platner is healthy enough to physically work as an oyster farmer and run a demanding Senate campaign, how does he qualify for 100% VA disability? He declines to detail his specific conditions, directing questioners to the VA and its published processes. But he pivots immediately to the policy problem underneath the political attack: the VA's bureaucratic barriers stop many veterans from accessing the benefits they earned, particularly when those veterans are already in crisis. He describes friends who have simply given up after being told they filled out the wrong form — the system fails people at the exact moment it's designed to help them. His own experience reinforces the point: he filed his first claim in 2013 and didn't receive a final rating until the early 2020s. The years between — when he had no support — were the years he struggled most. His Senate priority on this issue is concrete: build an army of VA social workers to go out into the country and find every veteran who is falling through the cracks, before their struggles reach a breaking point.
The war in Iran is the same as Iraq — politicians treating military force as a toy to protect themselves politically and enrich their friends. And the end game may just be returning to the exact status quo that existed before the war started, at the cost of 13 American lives and $50 billion.
Platner says the war in Iran has already cost $50 billion and 13 American lives, only to potentially return to pre-war conditions.
VA healthcare was life-changing for Platner, but getting it took nearly a decade of fighting paperwork. The years before his final rating — when he was struggling most — were the years he had no support at all. He wants to build an army of VA social workers to find every veteran still in that gap.
Platner filed his first VA disability claim in 2013 but did not receive a final rating until the early 2020s — nearly a decade later.
