john999

VA will accuse you of doctor shopping and yet they do it all the time.

VA medical does not make house calls as far as I know. How are housebound vets supposed to get to C&P exam or medical treatment? How to get to grocery store? VA just cares about saving money at vet's expense. It is all about their budget and damn a vet. VA throws away millions and then denies a vet the proper compensation.

If you take opiates for pain that will cause ED.

I got TDIU in 2002 and appealed to get P&T and got it with an EED. It can be done.

For you service connection for prostate cancer should be a slam/dunk since you are a Vietnam vet. Something is not right with time frame you have for this. If you get a C&P exam it is no struggle for SC. I have four AO conditions. Pretty easy for most of them.

Fort Polk was a horror story. It was a slum. I was at Ft. Benning and Polk in the summer of 1969. Heat stroke was the word. We had a guy in basic with a heart condition. He wanted to stay in the army. They did finally discharge him. Every time we went on a march he fell out. It took the army about 6 weeks to finally discharge him.

When I joined in 1969 there was a very strong bias towards the Army diagnosing every mental condition as a pre-existing personality disorder or psychiatric disorder. Probably half of PTSD claims were labeled as personality disorders so the Army and VA did not have to pay. PTSD was not even recognized until the mid 1980's I think along with AO. Vietnam vets suffered for years with being misdiagnosed. I was diagnosed with everything from bipolar to paranoid schizophrenia.

My next door neighbor wants a bigger house, but he cannot buy one at any price. The investors offer cash way above the asking price. Then they demolish the existing home and build a McMansion. The neighbor paid $450,000 for a small house 5 years ago and that was way too expensive. I see this is happening all over the Sunbelt for sure. Have to buy a house in Detroit. Maybe we could afford that but who wants to live there? Rents in my area went up 30% this year on top of 20% last year.

Here, here....we need an increase to basic level of compensation. It has not changed since WW11. My father got 10% in 1947. It was 8 dollars a month. I got 10% in 1973. It was 28 dollars a month. That was almost 30 years and it went up 20 bucks a month. 100% in 1973 was $650 I think. It was low! An insult to all vets. No wonder they can't find people to join up.

Bronco....well said! If 3 million vets called their congressmen something might change. VA compensation is so low that it does not compensate vets for real lost income. Say you had a good job before being disabled. Now you have to live on half that much and like it. The DAV, VFW and AL should be leading the charge. Where are they? Many younger vets don't have a pension or significant SSA money coming to them. They must live on VA alone. I could not do it and I make more than most from VA I think. We need more money from VA. If not us then who deserves it more? We got hurt for our country sake.

It is a long, hard slog to get 100%. Invest some of that retro and enjoy the rest. If you have a pile of dollars to cushion your fall it is a nice feeling. When you need a new roof or your car blows up you can replace it without debt. If you own your house and car you can live on VA money IMO. You wife and kids get ChampVA and VA must take care of you even if you end up in a nursing home.

In Tampa where I live the official year over year CPI is 11%. The VA and SSA are not keeping up. Yes, the government excludes food and energy from the CPI. In Tampa the real inflation is housing. Where I live housing prices have exploded since Covid. Houses selling for 700K now sell for well over a million plus. New houses are going for near 2 million bucks. I bought my house 35 years ago for 70K and since year 2015 prices have soared. Regular people can't even buy a house since investors pay cash.

I Even after "The Good War" the VA screwed vets with service -connected injuries. Many vets had been rated 40% plus, and just a few years after the peace they were reduced. Many did not even protest that much since the amount of compensation was so small. Doctor shopping is SOP for the VA, but with them farming it out to LHI and others it can backfire on them since those exam "doctors" don't seem to care about how much compensation they award. The nation takes us out of mothballs once or twice a year and says "Thanks for your service". How about decent compensation rates?

This is an old trick worker's compensation doctors pull. You say you can't bend over and they "help" you to do it. Now you are a liar and a fraud. Tell them to "STOP"! Now you have hurt yourself with aide of C&P doctor. If you think it will be easy to prove that think again. Your word against the C&P doctor. Best claim is a mental health claim. They cannot xray your brain or force you to bend your broken brain. They would if they could. Any physical injury claim should be accompanied with mental health claim such as depression. Most common type injury that lays people up and ruins their working lives is a back injury.

Those claims can be won because former members won them for spouses. I would not let a VA doctor touch my eye with a ten foot pole. I had severe cataract in my right eye and went to the VA. They refused to operate and prescribed glasses that were an inch thick. in hindsight I am glad. I went to a real eye doctor and got the surgery with zero problems and much improved eye sight. My wife has an eye problem and doctors misdiagnosed it over and over again. She finally got a very special doctor to make the right call. No surgery, just some glasses.

There is a way to get at the VA money bag if their treatment harms you regardless if it is for SC or Non-SC condition. It is like suing them for medical malpractice. One of our former members was a past master at this.

I have not slept well in years. I used to sleep like the dead sometimes 10 hours at a time. Now I am an old fart I don't sleep at all sometimes.

Mr. CUE I have to agree with you on worker comp and SSDI doctors. These guys do tend to be whores, but not all. WC will go way out there to find doctors to deny a claim. They are the worst, but docs who do lots of exams for SSI/SSDI are pretty bad as well. The government would not hire them if they gave benefit of doubt to claimants. Their job is to help deny benefits. Why does it usually take years to win a SSDI claim? They want to starve you into going back to work able or not. Then they can deny the claim since you proved you could work (or starve.)

If you can live in a real low standard of living state then maybe your compensation would be enough to live on OK. I have thought about packing up and moving to Oklahoma or Arkansas maybe. Parts of the deep south are quite beautiful. I lived in N. Carolina, Virginia and Georgia for a while. When I was a kid I used to visit an aunt in rural Georgia during the 1960's. It was like going back 75 years in time. I had never seen poverty like that. Money did go a long way. I like the south but the climate is hell on me these days. I can't take the heat anymore or the cold either.

You know at the beginning of the Civil War bodies of dead were left to rot on the battlefield. Outrage over treatment of the dead (battlefields stunk for miles around) finally got the government to bury the dead. I think after battles of Sharpsburg the stink was so bad people moved away. My great, great grandfather was a confederate soldier. He told my great grandmother that sight of hogs eating the dead never left his mind. So we have a holiday.

Dot09 Of course, the VA fights if it means money. VA is just a machine that grinds the bones of vets and spouses. They should be our advocates instead of foes. I have delt with those mothers for 50 years. They will choke on a gnat and swallow a whale.

I did much better with LHI than with VA exam doctors. I never met a LHI exam doctor that told me that Vietnam vets often fake DMII just to get money. A VA exam doctor told me Vietnam vets get fat on purpose just to get DMII money. Can you believe it.

Benzodiazapine is a bitch to withdraw from worse than narcotics and more dangerous. I did it as well. The VA insisted since I was getting percoset for pain. Valium is another sedative that is hard to kick. Ten million housewives take this stuff and are addicted.

JM You should file for TDIU now. You are unemployable since 2016. You might want to spend a week or two in the hospital to put the icing on the cake. If you are feeling suicidal they must admit you. They will ask if you have a plan to knock yourself off. If you say "yes" then you will get admitted. Do you have someone who can get you out of the zoo when you are tired of it. I know I sound cynical but that is the way the game is played. You need to be proactive.

What is your current disability rating? Bipolar 1 is a more serious DX that Bipolar 2 by and large. It means you have actual manic-depressive episodes. How many times have you been in the hospital for bipolar? Have you had major manic episodes? Are you able to work? What kind of meds? If you can't work and take heavy meds you will probably get 70%-100% rating IMO. There is no way to really guess what a C&P exam doctor is going to say but yours sounds good. Don't be too surprised if you have to appeal because the VA is the final rating agency no matter what the doctor says. I got a 30% rating for bipolar 11 way back in 1997. It was upgraded to 70% when I lost my job because of it. High ratings are all about "Can you work"? If you are still working the ratings tend to be much lower, but who knows as Whodat says. Whodat is just telling the truth on this one.