john999

If you have bladder cancer and you have to wait a couple of years to win your claim that is outrageous. Some vets can't wait that long. Us AO vets have waited decades for justice. Every Nam vet I know has AO problems.

Bronco To keep up with cost of living we probably should be getting twice as much compensation as we do get. If your only income is VA comp. then you are probably living in poverty. If the only money I had was VA money I could not have bought a house, new car or just about any big ticket item. Me and you probably get about the same money from VA each month. When I pay all my bills plus food, gas etc. that money is long gone. Each year politicians take a bow for giving us a COLA. I am married. We could not live on my VA comp. alone without our SSA and my pension. This is absurd. VA is supposed to replace the income I lost when I was able to work. That has not been true for the last 20 years. I do hope younger vets will rectify this for themselves in the future. My race is almost done. I will cruise on into the sunset but they have to live in this world.

How about everyone writing their congressmen and pointing out how low our compensation rates are especially for younger vets who become 100% and have no significant SSA or pension benefits from a long term job. If I was 25 years old even with 100% benefits I would be living in near poverty. I could not afford to buy a house in my area on $3200? This is chump change for a young disabled vet. Old guys like me have SSA and maybe pension benefits plus our VA compensation. Unless you are getting TDIU or 100% you don't even get $2000 a month maximum for 90%. I have disability insurance payments plus SSA and pension. I do OK but if I did not have that extra I would be hurting. How many vets have all that? I am lucky.

How about them doing something about our poverty level compensation rates!

VA is really slow. What is their half-ass excuse? I have wondered if I kicked the bucket today how long would it take for my wife to get DIC. I have SSA, OPM pension and VA, but if it takes months to get all these things started for my wife this would be a hardship. How many people can go 3 or 4 months with no paycheck? I do have an emergency fund, but it is still hard because sudden death can leave the spouse in bad shape.

If you got 70% you probably deserved 100%, but if you are not working 70% with TDIU is the same thing. I had many VA C&P exams and many only lasted 15 minutes. I got 70% for a mental health issue and this was back before Iraq and Afghanistan. Vietnam vets were really treated like S**T. I am glad you got your 70% without having years of appeals like me. Get your money. That is all you get from the VA, US Military and the American people.

If a spouse reports the death of a 100% vet will ChampVA be continued until the spouse can claim survivor benefits. My wife has ChampVA. I know it probably takes months to get DIC after report of death. If all my VA benefits suddenly stopped my wife lose alot until she got survivor benefits including $1400 a month. Same for SSA survivor and postal pensions.

Verizon are a bunch of thieves. I have a phone through my cable bill. Cheaper by far. I also use the cheap cell phone thing. I don't need a smart phone glued to my ear 24/7 like some people. People pay $1000 for a smart phone. You know one thing about cell phones is that you are being tracked by anyone with authority to get your cell phone records. Cell has GPS to track you. Talk about Big Brother.

I have delt with worker's compensation doctors and I did not have a problem, but I think if WC keeps sending you to doctors every year you will eventually find one that decides you are perfectly OK and should return to work. When I first started appealing my initial low ball rating from the VA way back in 1973 I was up against doctors that just looked at previous rating and continued it. No matter what I said I just got the same denial of an increase. The VA exam doctors would just ask me the same question..." Are you working?" If I said "Yes" no increase. These guys just rubber stamped the previous opinion over and over. If your disability is not a real slam dunk then when you see these C&P doctors you never know what will come out of it.

Oh, yes we are falling behind even if we got a 7% COLA. If we have a 6.9% inflation rate that will devastate any savings you have over time. Inflation just kills savings and investments except real estate, perhaps. The government will do anything to fix inflation including throwing millions of people out of work by raising interest rates. Inflation hurts stocks and bonds and Wall Street rules the nation anyway. I own some stocks and I am way down over the past month since alarm bells rung over inflation and the new viris.

I used the VA for dental once and the idiots pulled the wrong tooth. I spend mucho money getting a implant. I would not trust those VA dentists with cleaning my teeth. The gave me some kind of tooth paste and it turned my teeth brown. I had to get special cleaning to get them restored. I did have a crown done and it took them two months to do the actual crown after doing a temporary crown. In the meantime that took almost went bad. I had a real dentist finish it.

I went for an exam to try and get my DMII raised from 20% to 40%. I also had a claim for PN that was rated at 10% for each limb. The VA ended up increasing my claim for PN by 80% but failed to increase the rating for DMII. The increase in PN did raise me from 90% TDIU to schedular 100%. All I wanted was for my DMII to be reevaluated in light of a recent hospitalization when my sugar got way out of control. You just never know what will come out of one of these exams and subsequent rating. VA looked at my DMII rating and found one detail that did not match a 40% rating. I mean I have to have two injections of insulin a day plus pills and restricted diet. I do not have restricted activity, so no 40%. I can tell you how hard it is to go from 90% to 100%. Even with the extra 80% I did not make it to actual 100%. I got 98% rounded off to 100%.

I got TDIU in 2001. About 8 years later I got an extra 60%. I did claim "S". The VA did not award me "S" when they should have but they did call a CUE on themselves and I got a couple of years retro. I would not hesitate to claim S if you are entitled. Since that time I have gotten an extra 80% and gone to 100%. Don't back off or worry about doing the right thing for yourself.

You are not supposed to have to file for "S" if you qualify. I did have to claim it and the VA turned it into a CUE so I got 8 months retro on that one. That is the only CUE I ever won and I did not even file it as a CUE.

I remember you, yulooking I wondered what happened to you.

Get a private shrink to review your file and write a letter for you. There is a format for doing IMO's you can show to your doctor so he gets it right. It is a matter of buzz words and phrases. You can use the DBQ as a format for your doctor to use. Years ago I got a former VA shrink to do an IMO for me. I won hands down. The VA just copied my doctor's report into the VA rating decision. This was 20 years ago but the principle is the same.

Get an IMO. That is the best evidence you can get. I got many for my MH claim. It is worth paying a shrink a few bucks to help you win a claim. You just can't rely on the VA for evidence. You can't rely on a C&P exam. Get your own doctor.

10% for depression is a low ball rating. I would not accept that without getting an IMO and appealing it.

You can get 100% for GAD just as well as for PTSD. The VA rates emotional conditions the same basically. To get 100% for any mental condition is pretty hard if you go by VA guidelines. You have to be totally incapacitated in every way including social and employment. I got 70% for bipolar disorder. To get 100% I would have had to be in an institution. I was not going lie and tell the VA that I ate my own feces just to get a rating. I was honest with the bastards and that was hard enough. What counts with mental health claims is just how badly your condition disables you regarding work and social world.

Due to my mental and physical I really do forget to take my blood pressure meds since I have five of them and take some 3 times a day. Do I need to file for SMC since I forget to take DMII and HBP meds? I really get what Asknod is saying he is the expert on SMC. I got two SMC's already but in order to pay bills I need more.

Pacman It is so obvious that physical injury often leads to depression I wonder why the VA does not just do a routine screen for depression for disabled vets? I think I know the answer....it would cost the VA millions of bucks. They put the government bank account over the lives of vets....routine.

One day a year the USA takes the vets out of mothballs and gives us a lousy parade and a free meal. Increase our compensation, widow's benefits, better medical care and better educational benefits. Keep the parades and free meals.

One day a year you get a free meal. Wow......! I guess that compensates for the cancer from AO or the missing leg. I guess a penny in your beggars cup makes all the difference. My God, our compensation rates are so low that you would be better off on welfare. Instead of a free handout we should be getting twice as much in compensation so we would be able to pay for meals at the local steakhouse. My father was a WW11 vet and he got 8$ a month in compensation for a 10% disability. We have only got cola's for the last 70 years. No increase in basic compensation. This is what your fellow citizens think of you.

Pacman I have been preaching about depression due to chronic pain for years. If you go from being able bodied to being in a wheelchair or being in chronic pain you will probably be depressed. File for it!

If the military or VA really wants to screw you they will diagnose you as a personality disorder. They have been doing this for 50 years at least. Their favorite DX is "Borderline Personality disorder". That means you can't get compensation for that DX. If you have ever been in any kind of trouble in your life you might get the other favorite " Anti-Social Personality Disorder" which is the kiss of death. During and after Vietnam they DX'ed thousands of vets with these favorites/