This Week's Podcast: A Faster VA and a Fight Over Free Help

This week’s episode covers a busy stretch of veteran news. The biggest theme is speed. The VA cut the wait for prosthetic limbs, opened a drug-free virtual reality pain program to every VA provider, and switched on its new health record at four more hospitals in Ohio and Kentucky. We talk through what each change means in practice, including the prosthetics wait dropping from 94 days to a projected 54.We also dig into the VA’s new clinical trial of MDMA-assisted therapy for veterans with both PTSD and alcohol addiction. It is a small study, 80 veterans at two sites, but it sits inside a much larger federal push. The VA now runs 19 other trials on psychedelic therapies. We cover what the trial does, what it does not, and why the VA is warning veterans not to self-medicate in the meantime.Then the episode turns to two fights over trust. Congress introduced the SAFEGUARD Veterans Act, a bipartisan bill that would restore criminal penalties for “claim sharks,” companies that charge veterans for claims help that is already free. And two Pulitzer-winning journalists sued the Pentagon, saying new rules strip Stars and Stripes of the editorial independence Congress built to protect it.We close with remembrance. Twenty-nine World War II veterans returned to Normandy for the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, where 107-year-old Navy veteran Art Rose read the letter he sent his parents in June 1944. And here in Washington, the state marks Women Veterans Day on Friday, June 12, honoring more than 60,000 women veterans who call this state home.Every story in the episode comes from the week’s reporting, and the source links are in this week’s written roundup. If you only have a few minutes, the prosthetics change and the claim sharks bill are the two segments most likely to affect a veteran you know. Get full access to Veteran Voice at veterannews.substack.com/subscribe