Jocko Underground: Are Veterans Taking Advantage of The System?

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Jiu Jitsu Academy pressure from the instructor. Toxic? Or Helpful? Proper mindset for raising kids with disabilities. Are vets taking advantage of the system? When you feel that your military service was worthless. Another take on the conundrum of Money VS Passion. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 135, sitting here with Echo Charles. We're getting into some question and answer scenarios.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Advice for the people.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  Yes. You like to throw that out there, don't you?

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Well, you know who else is one of those people?

• 0:15Jocko Willink?

  Who? You.

• 0:17Jocko Willink?

  Check. Got some good ones.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, good ones.

• 0:20Jocko Willink?

  Let's see what we got.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  Hello, I'm interested in hearing your opinion on what I believe is a growing problem. I have three separate situations to run by you. My father, my father collects a chunk of change every month from the VA. He claimed he suffered partial deafness while in the Army. He was an MP for two years before joining a police department and serving 20 years, 12 years as a detective. Now, situation two, it's my cousin. My cousin is dating a retired Marine with four years' service and

• 0:54Speaker 01

  and one tour to Qatar sometime after 2018. He claims he suffers from severe PTSD and the VA provides him with a hefty amount of money each month for his disability. This, the kid is in his mid 20s and though, and through conversations with him, I am under the assumption that his PTSD is not the level of severity some veterans are facing. Okay, situation three. My aunt's husband was in the Army for over 10 years with multiple tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. He suffered a TBI in combat and has trouble every day. He does not receive nearly the amount of money the other two individuals are collecting. Okay, so we, we have veterans out, out on the street.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  I'm having trouble respecting the individuals in the first two situations. Do you believe some veterans are taking advantage while other veterans are just, are not getting the support they need? Thank you, Jocko, for your service and all that you do. You're one of my many heroes in the military.

• 1:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, your, your actual specific question that you asked is very easy to answer. You asked, um, do I believe some veterans are taking advantage? Yes, I do believe that some veterans are taking advantage of the system. Do I believe other veterans are not getting the support that they need? Yes, I believe that other veterans are not getting the support that they need. The way the system is set up, we err on the side of giving people support. So, you know, sort of like the way we do our justice system. We would rather let 10, let a thousand guilty people go rather than convict one innocent person.

• 2:36Jocko Willink?

  So they kind of set up the air that, hey, we're going to try and take care of veterans that need it. If some people that don't really need it, get it, well, that's the, that's the way we're going to go. But as I thought through this question, this is, there's a very interesting aspect to this. Getting support requires a certain level of organization and effort and focus. It requires you to be a little bit squared away. In order to get, uh, pay from the VA, you gotta be, you gotta have some, you gotta be squared away. And in a sense, you gotta, you gotta set appointments. You gotta go to the appointments, you gotta remember the appointments, you got a bunch of forms you gotta fill out.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  You gotta make a bunch of calls, you gotta set reminders, you gotta show up on time. You gotta fill out the forms correctly and give them, you know, it takes time and it's annoying. So there's all these things that you have to do. And many of the things that you have to do are hard to do if you've got actual PTSD. So this is a crazy, I never really thought about this before. Like if, Echo, if you had a bad TBI, guess what? Your memory is a little bit off. Guess what? You're focused a little bit, how are you filling out a long ass form when your focus is all jacked up? Cause you got blown up nine times on Route Irish in Baghdad. So that's part one.

• 4:01Jocko Willink?

  Part two, personality wise. A person who has served in combat in, and in like sustained combat?

• 4:19Jocko Willink?

  And done a good job.

• 4:22Jocko Willink?

  They're not the type of person that complains. They're not the type of person that goes to sick call. They're not the type of person that asks for handouts. They're the type of person that puts the team ahead of themselves.

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  So, so that type of personality is not the type of personality that fills out the form and says, yeah, you know, I feel I can't, I have trouble sleeping at night. They're like, I whatever. They're not like, oh yeah, my knees hurt. Yeah, I'll push through it. You see these two different types of personalities? Meanwhile, a person on the other end of the spectrum. That goes to sick call and asks for light duty and goes to the doctor and asks for handouts. That is the type of person that documents all these problems. You know, I have headaches now. Other person's like, dude, just give me another freaking. Cup of water. I just need to hydrate. Hey, my knees hurt. Of course they hurt. You're an infantryman. You know what I'm saying? Like, these are the two different, so, so when someone is the type of person.

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  That says like, you know, my shoulders hurt, you know, we did PT yesterday, my shoulders hurt, I'm going to sick call. That gets documented in your record. Fast forward 10 years, how many of those little documents are in your record? A ton of them. You go into the VA, they've like, oh, you've got some real problems with your shoulders. Yes, I do. Someone else that's just BTF. Like, what do you think Tony Affrati's freaking service record or medical record look like after 25 years? There's probably like six pieces of paper.

• 5:50Jocko Willink?

  Whereas someone that like, he never, never went and said, hey, my neck hurts, my shoulder hurts, my knees hurt. The dude, I was with him. Freaking break, he broke his foot. He broke his foot fast roping. He was like, and just carried on. You know what I'm saying?

• 6:07Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 6:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So.

• 6:11Jocko Willink?

  That type of personality has a really thin medical record and then when they go into the VA, they're like, "I'm fine." And they end up not getting anything that they need. Someone on the other end of the spectrum that complained about everything and documented everything, they go into the VA and they're like, "Oh yeah, I got some stuff to report." Boom, and they fill out these forms, they take the time.

• 6:29Jocko Willink?

  So this is how we end up, this is one of the reasons why we end up with these issues. And I guess if I was trying to, gonna try, because you didn't ask me for a solution, but I started thinking, "What would be the solution?"

• 6:41Jocko Willink?

  There should probably be some kind of a process inside the military that evaluates people throughout their career and tracks them and tracks what they've been through and... Because yeah, you know, like when you, when you, when you deploy to like a peaceful area that shouldn't give you PTSD and someone should say, "Ah, you know what, you went on deployment to Hawaii."

• 7:06Jocko Willink?

  You, how do you have PTSD from that? You know what I'm saying? There should be someone that's like outside, "Oh, maybe, could that happen? Sure, could happen. People get killed in training. Friend gets blown up next to you, you could have some issues from that." In Hawaii, by the way. But let's figure that out. So it seems like there should be a kind of a long-term tracking of people and they're doing a better job with this. I know in special operations, they're, they're certainly tracking like, "Okay, how many times did you get blown up? How many times have you gone through breaching? How many times have you shot a Carl Gustaf?" They're tracking some of this stuff to see what kind of damage is happening to these guys over time.

• 7:44Jocko Willink?

  So I think you would need like a group inside the military that was able to track and assess

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  what was going on. And it's weird too, like, like you can have a back problem and you could have two people. One person is truly devastated by their back having an issue and the other person doesn't even have an issue. And you could look into MRI of both their backs and not be able to tell who's having a major issue. Do you know that? Like when I had neck surgery, the dude's like, "They did do the MRI of my neck." And he's like, "Yeah, you know, you have a jacked up neck, just like everyone else." That's whatever I was at the time, you know? He's like... You have a jacked up neck. He goes, everyone has a jacked up neck. You know, and when you're in the SEAL teams, you have a little bit more jacked up neck and that's about what your neck looks like.

• 8:37Jocko Willink?

  I'm like, cool. I can't move my arm. He's like, yep, I get it. That's what we're going to try and fix. So

• 8:44Jocko Willink?

  there's so many things that you can't put together. So that's what makes it really difficult because you and I, I could have like my back could be fine and your back could be devastated. And you and I could both go to medical. I'm like, oh, my back hurts so bad. And it's very difficult to tell.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And that's not to mention the, the, the TBI stuff.

• 9:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Where it's like, bro, that seems like that would be a massive spectrum of what that looks like.

• 9:05Jocko Willink?

  Yep. So it's very difficult. And that's why I think you'd have to track like what was going on throughout a person's career. And you're still going to err towards like, hey, look, if Echo says his back is bad, we're going to give him the benefit of the doubt. You know, you know what they do with insurance companies? They're like, go and watch your ass. Like, oh, you got a bad back, but you're doing freaking jujitsu? No, you don't have a bad back. Insurance companies do that.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:31Jocko Willink?

  Like, oh, a workman's comp does that, too. Oh, you say you, you hurt your back lifting boxes? Cool. Here we have you water skiing this weekend. How was that? They send out little private investigators.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  I know, bro. I've seen that.

• 9:43Jocko Willink?

  So

• 9:45Jocko Willink?

  that's what I, they would need something inside to really monitor these things. Still going to err towards, hey, let's try and take care of people. But it's going to be a challenge. In the meantime, what do I do? Support charities like America's Mighty Warriors, to be quite honest with you. Cause America's Mighty Warriors takes our warriors and there's certain medical treatments that they won't do. Hyperbaric chambers, like, um,

• 10:07Jocko Willink?

  basically high levels of nutrients into the system. Mama Lee's got a whole system set up. Navy SEAL Foundation does some great stuff. Heroes and Horses. Get these people with traumatic brain injury and TBI and PTSD. Get them out in the freaking woods of Montana with Micah Fink sitting in a cold bath every morning. Get some of that, straighten your ass out, make you feel good. I support those foundations.

• 10:35Jocko Willink?

  And that's kind of how I try and move forward with this because you're right. It's not fair. It's not equitable.

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  And that's the way it is. Maybe over time it'll get better. I, I really feel for the guys. Look, the guys that, that jam, uh, whatever scam the system. Whatever. It, what's more disturbing to me is people that need help, but they never reported anything. They, you know, I mean, I tell that guys right now. When I talk to guys in the military, I'm like, you know, say, oh, I got hurt the other day or whatever. Like, put that in your medical record. Get that thing in there. Cause it's going to add up over time. So there we go. My recommendations.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  And some people, they don't really like paperwork, just in general.

• 11:25Jocko Willink?

  Looking at one of them right here, Brad.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  I think you're looking at one too.

• 11:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. In general, but, um, but, and so there's, there can be a big difference. This goes for anything like where, where to go and I say paperwork, but a lot of it is like taking care of like business and affairs, you know, where it's like, and then some of it is like looking into it. Like you kind of got to research stuff. Like I'm available for this. I'm, I know this because I just got financial aid from my nephew. He's going to college. So financial aid is like one of those ones where the more you look into it, the more you'll find. So it's like, bro, I'm like, I don't want to freaking look into all this. There's so much to do. Then you gotta fill out the form and that, bro, that's a gut check. The whole thing. If you're not into it, you know?

• 12:04Jocko Willink?

  But think about this, same thing, right? The personality of someone that's like squared away. They've got their finances in order. They've saved money. They don't need financial aid. As much as the person that like has been screwed up. And so guess what? The person that's squared away.

• 12:25Jocko Willink?

  That is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen.

• 12:34Jocko Willink?

  Go to jockounderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors and we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen

• 13:19Jocko Willink?

  this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So, thank you. It's jockounderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month and if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.