Pappas bill targets auto-dialers used on United States Department Of Veterans Affairs lines
Rep. Chris Pappas introduced a bipartisan bill to stop companies from using auto-dialers to call federal agencies, after a 2025 investigation into Trajector Medical’s use of a united states department of veterans affairs benefits hotline. The proposal would bar a practice that investigators said let a claims company monitor veterans’ disability ratings and bill them when payments rose.
Trajector employees told NPR that the company’s CallBot program placed tens of thousands of calls a month to a VA phone hotline, responded to automated prompts and entered veterans’ Social Security numbers and birthdays to detect increases in disability ratings. Pappas said the bill was prompted by that reporting.
Pappas And Bacon
Pappas, a Democrat from New Hampshire, sponsored the measure with Rep. Don Bacon and two Republican colleagues. Bacon said in a press release that “Our veterans should never be targeted by bad actors trying to profit off their hard-earned benefits,” and said the bill “takes a commonsense approach to crack down on predatory practices and protect veterans from exploitation.”
Pappas also told NPR, “It's crazy what these guys are trying to get away with,” and added, “To use a robo-dialer to make multiple calls to government lines and then just send veterans a bill whenever their eligibility has changed, it's just outrageous.”
Trajector Medical Billing
Trajector told NPR, “We rely on happy clients to self-report their successes due to our medical evidence services.” The company also told NPR that it discloses the practice to veterans, while many veterans said they did not understand that the company was monitoring them this way.
The bills that followed can range from hundreds of dollars to more than $20,000. Federal law already prohibits charging veterans for help filing initial disability claims, but civil penalties were removed from the law two decades ago, limiting enforcement tools.
House Veterans' Affairs
Pappas has also sponsored a separate bill to reinstate civil penalties and effectively ban for-profit claims consulting nationwide. The House Committee on Veterans' Affairs has not advanced either bill, leaving the new auto-dialer proposal as one more test of whether lawmakers will move beyond criticism and into limits that can be enforced.
