The Department of Veterans Affairs announced that it is relieving veterans of more than $272 million in potential medical bills that accrued after the department had stopped certain copayment claims processing and collections in early 2023.
“Under President Trump, VA is focused on providing the best possible care and maximum convenience for veterans, families, caregivers and survivors,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a release announcing the relief. “Taking these steps to efficiently resolve the backlog of copayments will prevent veterans from being blindsided with mountains of medical debt that accumulated due to problems the Biden administration failed to solve.”
The Collins-led VA claims that under the Biden administration, certain copayments that were normally billed to veterans for community care services were repeatedly paused starting in February 2023 due to technical issues with the department’s Program Integrity Tool, which centralizes community care claims data from multiple payment systems to ensure VA issues accurate payments to providers and accurate bills to veterans.
The release claims that the previous administration failed to process and collect copayments for community care services related to the PIT pause, resulting in veterans unknowingly accruing hundreds of millions in potential medical debt.
VA resumed billing for community care co-payments as of Nov. 11, 2025.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.