‘Pension Poachers’ Are Targeting America’s Elderly Veterans

During his second inaugural address, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that America should serve its soldiers long after they were done serving it. Coming just weeks before final victory in a gruesome civil war that killed at least 750,000, his words would become the motto for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Today, a metal plaque marking the entrance to the agency’s headquarters recites the VA’s duty to U.S. soldiers. Its mission—as Lincoln said in 1865—is to “care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan.”

Larry Eber was one of those soldiers. But today’s VA is having a hard time ...