john999

You have two different issues. You have a criminal charge, and then you have a discrimination charge. You have to be found not quilty on the criminal charge or the other case will die. If you take a plea or No Contest or guilty plea on the criminal thing you are dead meat on the civil thing. Defeat the criminal charges first and then find a labor discrimination lawyer. There are probably one million criminal defense lawyers in Dallas. When do you go to trial on the criminal charges. That is your big problem. If you are convicted and get sent to the can you don't need to worry about job discrimination because they will have all they need to turn your civil case to shit. You sound like you believe the police, your attorney, co-workers and your boss are all in this thing together. Call your lawyer and ask them what the plan is to defend you against criminal charges.

I would file a NOD on all your issues. If they don't mention a condition in your rating file a NOD on it. Deferred ratings should be appealed because they can just disappear off the radar. If you are granted SC for a condition I would also NOD that because you probably got low balled anyway. I went from 0% SC for a heart condtion mainly just because I appealed it and then produced some new evidence.

The VA said I had schizophrenia and rated me 10%. This was in 1973. Can you imagine that? People with schizophrenia tended to be institutionalized at that time. They did not work, and spent their lives in and out of mental hospitals. I guess I was a special person who could overcome all that on my 28$ a month from the VA. I was hospitalized four times in and out of the military before I got the rating. Not only could I not work, but for a while I could not go outside.....10%.

Who is representing you at the BVA on your CUE?

Bergie The VA yanked your tooth. What are they going to do to replace it? Even people living in deep poverty can be toothless. If you are on welfare you can get dentures. Since you are IU the VA owes you total and complete health care including dental.

Get a lawyer for the SSD for sure. You don't have to go it alone.

I think we need something besides just letter writing. While all this scandal has been going on the claims backlog reached 1,000,000. It is time for our gutless VSO's and us individual vets to march. Why are not the VSO's encouraging vets to demonstrate? I think I know. They don't want vets to know that they have the power in their own hands to make things happen. The VSO's want us to depend on them and their impotent tactics. Bush & Co. laughed at the VSO's and said they were paper tigers. The same congress is laughing at us because we are not as important as banks, Wall Street, GM, Iraq, Osama and all the rest. We are just ahead of welfare mothers and convicts.

The VA preaches about oral health but they won't pay a dime unless you are SC'ed for your teeth or 100%. I am TDIU. I am told I am entitled to one dental exam every two years. That is not acceptable. I paid for my own implant....$3000. You cannot put a brige unless you have something to hang it off and this was a back molar with an opposing molar. Every civilian dentist I talked to said I need to get an implant if I wanted to save the opposing molar. I think I will just go back to my civlian dentist for an exam. I am not waiting two years or until I have a toothache. I thought the VA was big on prevention? No, I think they are big at evasion.

VA appeals system has been dysfunctional for 40 years. My hope is that lawyers who are taking up the cause of vets at lower levels like the RO and BVA will start to pressure the VA to fix this broken down system. I have a Form 9 appeal that is waiting to be certified to the BVA. The SOB's are just sitting on it and arguing with my lawyer. Carlie That was a really good post. My lawyer should see that.

Rental You can appeal any medical decision the VA makes regarding your treatment. The first step is to call the patient advocate and explain the situation. I would also do as you were saying and talk to the PCP. I bet this happens all the time. I have a pain management contract also. If you drank a beer the day before the piss test that would be enought to violate your contract. I have had nothing but trouble with VA pain management. I got into a jam with them just for complaining about side effects of morphine they gave me. I do know there is a formal process to appeal any medical decisions the VA does, but they hide this, and the patient advocates try to never invoke it (causes paperwork and worries the boss). Sometimes you just cannot give water on demand. I have never been violated, but it is just a matter of time. I have a civilian pain doctor as a backup. When I complained about the morphine Pain Management said I had to get off all my VA pain meds. I started with patient advocate and then called the medical director's office to complain, and start appeals process. You make a written appeal to the head of the medical director's office. It never got that far. It all got worked out in the end. Sometimes I believe the VA is just looking for an excuse to kick us off the program. The people running VA pain management seem to believe that every vet is getting drugs from VA and selling them on the street. The VA wants to know that you are taking the drug and not so much that you are taking other things. The assumption is not so much that you are a drug addict as a drug dealer.

Rock No connection between nasal fracture and deviated septum????? That is absurd. They are almost the same thing.

The VA slam/dunked you because they say you did not show up for your C&P exam. If you don't go for the exam you almost always lose.

Better to know while you can still be helped than just before they throw dirt on you. Many thousands never get the biopsy that could have saved their lives.

I think Berta is showing us why we need expert help with CUE's. She is a self-taught expert, but she can't help us with the infinite details of our potential CUE's at the RO or BVA. One word that seems like you are asking the VA for a judgement call to weigh evidence and your CUE will just die. That is an easy mistake to make if I understand these CUE's in a humble way.

Kelly I think after WWII many vets did not feel they had a right to ask for serious compensation. Vietnam vets were just denied on such a host of issues that they got a horrible opinion of the VA, and wanted no part of it. Now the newest generation of vets has to deal with 60 years of neglect. Each generation deals with neglect because it was even worse for vets from WWI and earlier.

Kelly You can discuss violent thoughts with your shrink, but skip the violent "Plans". If he thinks you are going to kill someone he has a duty to call for help. If you tell the shrink you are going to get your Glock and kill those bastards at SSA you will get yourself locked up. You can say you feel like.

I never heard anything good about fusion!

Flip floppers will kill you at the VA. It is like the open a highway to denial. ERISA is an one of the most abused concepts the insurance companies have found. They get a PA to say you are able to work and they are able to overrule five shrinks, an orthopod and a brain surgeon. I got that straight from an insurance lawyer.

If you are filing a CUE on a final RO decision I doubt a DRO will approve it because they do not have the guts to award significant retro even if your claim is perfect. They will kick it upstairs to the BVA. This is why you need a lawyer in my opinion. My DRO agreed at the hearing that my original decision was in error, but the written decision was a denial because we were looking at 30 years of retro. That is what my lawyer said and I agree. So now to the BVA on a claim that could have been done at the RO because of a lack of guts. Imagine some DRO granting a 200,000 dollar retro claim that goes back 30 years. He would be overruled by someone who just won't accept that responsibility at the RO level. These guys care about one thing and that is they backsides. If denied at the RO level get a lawyer to write the brief for the BVA. It will be worth it not to make mistakes they can take advantage of and screw you again for 10 years. Someone like Berta, can do this on her own but I am not up to it. I want an expert doing it even if I do pay 20%. Any time I can hire an expert I do it unless I just think it is something I know I can do with my resources.

In Florida only P&T vets get 100% property tax exemption. Funny thing is that housing prices have crashed, but the tax bill for the same houses has not gone down, but has gone up in some cases. Most people are just getting screwed to the wall in my state. We get almost nothing for our tax dollars that I can see. The schools are awful. The roads are terrible. No jobs in Florida, so don't bother coming unless you are retired.

In my CUE case the VA had the evidence, but simply refused to consider it. It was a medical report from my doctor. They only used the evidence from their doctor. They did not list or refer to my doctor's evidence at all in the decision. This is an old one, but a bold one. My doctor said I was IU and incapacitated. The VA gave me 10% based on in-patient records from a stay at the Tampa VA in 1972. It burns me. The gulf between IU and 10% is wide. It was a crazy final decision. I am going to the BVA so I may not live to win or lose it.

Me and my lawyer believe that if the VA does not consider all the evidence of record in a rating then it is CUE. If VA "must" consider all evidence of record and they don't do it then that sounds like a CUE to me. Are we wrong because we are betting the farm we are not wrong?

Airborne You won the whole lottery! Your dependenst are eligible for champva.

You can only be rated for one mental condition. Your depression may increase the overall disabiliy picture. It will probably just be viewed as part of the PTSD picture.

What the VA will do is deny one issue and if you have other issues they don't discuss them. You have to assume they were denied. Appeal all issues when you file the NOD. Don't assume any issues are deferred unless the rating letter says they are deferred. Say you file a claim with five issues and the VA sends you a letter denying one issue. Assume they denied them all and appeal them all.