Let's Cut Some Spending: $1 Billion in VA Travel Payment Errors

In our Let's Cut Some Spending series, ForAmerica chronicles the many ways Washington wastes YOUR tax dollars.

Today's offering: $1 billion in bungled travel reimbursements for veterans just trying to get to the doctor.

A new Government Accountability Office report found that the VA's Beneficiary Travel Program -- which reimburses veterans for mileage, gas, meals, and lodging when they travel to medical appointments -- racked up roughly $1 billion in cumulative improper payments from fiscal years 2018 through 2024. That includes overpayments, underpayments, and payments where the VA couldn't even confirm whether the amount was correct.

Some of it was simple sloppiness: VA staff manually entering the wrong mileage, or modifying claim amounts during reviews in ways that ended up overpaying beneficiaries and vendors. Other errors came from missing paperwork -- veterans who never submitted proof their appointment was medically necessary, reimbursed anyway. GAO also found 10 people convicted of fraud for submitting 892 bogus claims worth $219,000, mostly by lying about their home address to inflate the mileage they were owed.

The program's cost has ballooned from about $900 million in 2018 to $2.3 billion in 2025, even as the improper payment rate fell from 24% to 8% over that span.

To its credit, the VA has started transitioning to a new claims system and agreed with all nine of GAO's recommendations, including better documentation standards for verifying where veterans actually live. But auditors say the agency still hasn't proven its new controls are actually working -- meaning taxpayers are still on the hook while the VA figures out how to reliably pay veterans the right amount, the first time.

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$1 billion in errors on a program meant to help veterans get to the doctor is $1 billion that could have gone to veterans who actually needed it. Let's cut some spending.

Source: Government Accountability Office