The benefits and care a veteran earned are a debt the country already owes — not a budget line to trim, and not a market to hand to the lowest bidder. This statute holds that debt in trust: care can’t be diverted to private profit unless it’s proven to be as good or better, no middleman may charge you a toll to collect what you already earned, and a claim owed must be decided in time.
Earned benefits were treated as a discretionary budget line — something to ration, delay, or quietly divert when it was convenient.
Veterans’ care could be handed to private contractors with no guarantee it would match what it replaced on quality, access, or cost.
Predatory “claim shark” companies charged veterans thousands to file for benefits they’d earned and could get help with for free.
Claims sat in backlogs for months or years, and a benefit owed but endlessly delayed became a benefit denied.
Earned benefits are held in trust for those who served and their families — a debt already incurred, not a gratuity the government may withdraw.
Care moves to private hands only if it’s proven, on the record, to be as good or better on quality, access, timeliness, and cost — and the burden is on whoever wants to privatize it.
No one may charge a veteran a fee to collect a benefit they already earned, beyond accredited, fee-capped help. Illegal fees are void and clawed back.
Claims must be decided in a reasonable time, with interim support while a backlog is cleared. Timeliness is part of the debt.
Benefits earned by service were treated as a discretionary line item — subject to rationing and delay whenever budgets tightened.
Disability compensation, pension, health care, education, home, burial, and survivor benefits are earned by service and sacrifice and held in trust. They are a debt already incurred, and a reduction in them requires the supermajority this Constitution demands to weaken a protection.
Care and the money behind it could be diverted to private contractors with no guarantee the veteran would get care as good as what was replaced.
Veterans’ care may be placed in private hands only where private delivery is shown, on published and independent evidence, to meet or exceed public delivery on quality, access, timeliness, and cost — the burden on whoever proposes it, before the switch. Care can never be cut to create a market, and if a private provider falls short the function returns to public control without interruption.
Predatory “claim shark” companies charged veterans thousands — sometimes tens of thousands — to help claim benefits they’d earned and could get help with for free.
No one may charge a veteran a fee to obtain, claim, advise on, or expedite a benefit already earned, beyond accredited and fee-capped representation. Free accredited help stays free, and an illegal fee is void and recoverable. This carries forward the full anti-“claim shark” protections of CS-15.
Claims languished in backlogs, and there was no constitutional floor on how long a veteran could be left waiting for what they were owed.
Claims must be decided within reasonable time limits set by law. A backlog that leaves those who served without the care or support they’re owed is a harm the government must remedy; where a decision is overdue, the claimant is entitled to interim care or support, and the agency must publish its decision times and backlog each year.
A veteran wronged by a diverted program or an illegal fee had little practical recourse, and those who directed the conduct rarely answered for it.
A veteran, survivor, or entitled family member can enforce this statute — with unlawful fees voided and recovered, improperly privatized functions returned to public hands, damages, and, for deliberate exploitation of veterans’ benefits for gain, the penalties this statute and CS-15 provide, including personal liability for those who directed it.
This is the plain-language version. The binding text is CS-43, which implements Article Thirty-Three of the Constitution.
This is your country’s law. Help shape the next draft of it.
