john999

Stretch I think they did that to a lot of WWII vets. They would be discharged with a high rating and a few years later they would reduce it. My Father-in-law got blown up at Guam in the Marines and never got a damn cent. He was in the hospital for months and did not even know his own name. In 1971 a 10% disability from the VA was 28 dollars a month.

TestVet I was just rated 60% for heart disease. Do you think that is enough to get some kind of A&A. I am not sure myself. I did not know I was half dead until they told me at the VA. I thik they made a mistake but I will not argue that point.

Simple Fly If you flew in combat you should have gotten Air Medals as a crew chief. I remember all the old officers in Vietnam who would fly a few hours a month to get flight pay and to get their air medals. Do you have your DD214? It should be on there. Anything with a V device and that is your stressor right there.

I am looking at my denial of a CUE and I see that they reweighed the evidence without ever calling a CUE. How could they go back 35 years and reweigh the evidence if there was no CUE? I thought they first had to call a CUE and then reweigh the evidence. They said no CUE and the proceded to reweigh and reargue the original decision. Why did they do that? This decision of mine does not make sense. They just included my evidence they ignored the first time and said no CUE when they reweighed all of the evidence (and some they made up). I did not think it was supposed to go like that. I get the impression they had no idea what they were doing but knew enough to deny it.

These old decisions from the 60's and 70's are just horrible. You got one or two pages and a rating. No appeal rights, no discussion no C&P exam just a rating based on your military records. If many of these decisions were not defective I would be surprised. Do they reach the level of CUE with a deck stacked against you is the question?

They are just stalling as you say. If you have the verifiable stressor then it does not matter about your MOS. Hey, clerks and cooks got shot at and wounded in Vietnam. That was not in their MOS. I imagine you have air medals. Do you have any medal with a V device.

TestVet Are you going to try and get some sort of SMC like housebound? Every 100% vet is supposed to be considered for it. If there is evidence you are HB then you should have got it when you got 100% for PTSD.

The VA is non-adversarial. Keep repeating that until you pass out. They would never cheat a vet out of compensation! You put evidence in one end of the VA meatgrinder and you get something very different at the other end. Raters making medical inferrences and making their own diagnosis. It is all about the money, and how not to pay it.

Since you were denied Chapter 35 benefits you can appeal that issue which will get you to P&T. Like Pete says get a letter from a doctor saying you are P&T. That will make your P&T retro to the original 100% decision. Or you can wait a few years and ask for P&T like TestVet says. I hate to wait on these bastards so I would appeal it which is what I did. They should have considered you for housebound as well.

Pete Ha, ha, you got that right. The VA is so dumb then sent me the SSOC before the rating decision letter. Isn't that assbackwards? I talked to the lawyer's office and they are supposed to get back to me. I will appeal it with or without the lawyer. My ratings are 70%,60%, 10%,10%,10%, 10% and 10%. According to the way I understand VA math it still does not reach 100%.

I had a 0% rating for vascular artery disaease secondary to DMII dated 2007. If was part of the decision that denied my CUE when I filed it in 2007. They bumped it up to 60% effective July 2008. My doctor did say I had a pasive-aggressive personality disorder, but this kind of disorder is very common and is not a disabling sort of disorder. It does not cause paranoia, depression,anxiety and other symptoms. My doctor's letter only mentioned the PD in passing. The bulk of the report was about my chronic schizophrenia, and how it completely incapcitated me "due to the psychotic proportions of the disorder". He said I was unable to work due to schizophrenia. The VA used the PD disagnosis and just hooked it to what my shrink was saying about the schizophrenia. This goes with what Rentalguy was saying about the VA making medical diagnosis. They purposely misinterpreted the meaning and intent of all my medical evidence. I can't go back and bring in other evidence to discredit the PD disagnosis since it is a CUE. This is what the VA does when there is big money involved. They cheat! I got the SSOC today and not the actual decision. I have not got the decision yet. I am going to send my lawyer an email and ask him to appeal it to the BVA and beyond if he will go there with me.

I got a letter from the VA today. As I suspected the VA denied my CUE for an earlier effective date for TDIU back to 1971 based on a diagnosis of service connected schizophrenia. They said the reason I was unemployable was due to a passive aggressive presonality disorder. They turned my doctor's medical report on its head, and ignored the diagnosis of chronic schizophrenia, and somehow got a personality disorder out of that. They even ignored their own doctor's diagnosis of residual schizophrenia. They left my TDIU date as August 30, 2001 for the same condition (residual schizophrenia) they said I had in 1971. I guess schizoprenia morphed into a PD when money was on the line. The surprise was they rated my so-called heart disease at 60% up from 0%. So now according to my math I have a rating of 92%. I was already 80% and an extra 60% only gets me to 92%. I will definitely take this to the BVA if my lawyer is willing to go the distance. The rater made a medical decision to override my doctor' diagnosis and say it was a PD that made me unemployable rather than schizophrenia. The funny thing is the SSOC states the symptoms I am suffering from including paranoia, anxiety, depression, depersonalization (a symptom of dissociative disorder) and then says only 10%. These are not symptoms of a PD. I knew no DRO had the guts to approve a retro rating back to 1971 that would have cost them over a 100,000 bucks easy. However, with a heart condition now rated at 60% I think I should apply for HB. I am at death's door according to the VA. They got nothing right in this decision.

I have a CUE that goes back to 1971 which is the day I got out of the service.

Wings Trust the "Force". The Jedi Master "Phil" has given you your diploma. Now you can defeat Darth Vadar (AMC/DVA). Zap, Pow

Something funny happens when I take narcotics. I get woke up, and I have to take Klonopin to be able to sleep. Most people take strong pain meds they get sleepy, but it wakes me up and I can't sleep so I have to take clonazepam to relax. I'm addicted at least physically. I followed doctor's orders, and now I am a drug addict. All the drugs that end with "pam" are addictive.

Tag I am just guessing because I don't know why you would need to do a needs test if you are service connected. Needs tests are for poor vets who are trying to get medical care without paying co-pays or for those getting NSC pensions or who are trying to beat debts owed to the VA.

What we really need is veterans beating down the doors of their congressmen. We need hearings where vets are able to tell about the screwjobs they have received from the VA. Pressure in terms of money and votes is all the people with the power to help us understand. There are so many other problems competing with vet problems. I mean there are millions of people getting ready to lose their homes. If the veteran vote could be mobilized we would be in clover. Every southern state is full of vets, but they vote for those who disrespect them and screw them every chance they get. Maybe Ducksworth will help if she has major backing of Obama. It is not just a tin ear, but money that makes the VA go round. Cleland was a triple amputee and did nothing for vets when he was boss of the VA.

What about TDIU? Are you unemployable?

Maybe they are considering you for a NSC pension.

The longer you have been out of service has nothing to do with how long it takes to get your records from St. Louis to the VA. The problem with there being a long time between the time you get out of service and the time you file for disability is that you have to show that you have been disabled from a service connected injury or illness during the time between discharge and the time you file. The VA often wants you to show you have been getting treatment for your disability. If you wait 20 years to file on a back injury you got in service and you have not been getting treatment for that back injury all those years the VA may claim some intervening injury occurred. The longer you wait to file the harder it is to prove a nexus. This is particularly true of any illness that could be affected by age such as hearing. You are trying to prove it happened as a result of your service, and the VA is trying to show it didn't. That is what I think it boils down to.

My father-in-law had a severe TBI during WWII. It had profound effects on his behavior as time went by. You could not look at him or talk to him and see the problem. It came out in his behavior when he was under stress. I read that the VA believes that there may be 150,000 TBI cases from OIF/OEF. This is a ticking time bomb. I knew a guy from high school who got a TBI during Vietnam when he was blown off a tank that hit a mine. He never got a dime or any sort of claim as far as I know. He told me he had horrible headaches. That was 30 years ago and I don't know what happened to him. If you have any sort of TBI get it evaluated, and if you need treatment get it at the VA. You want to start building your file now.

I hope she does not turn into on of "Them" after a few years. The system tends to corrupt people.

When I hear that claims are being farmed out to the St. Petersburg Office I find that incredible. St. Pete is one of the busiest offices in the nation, and one of the worst. I live about 20 miles from the St. Pete sinkhole. They have lost everything I ever sent them. The decisions are laughable, and many look like they have been written by a six year old. I think it is just a game of pass the trash, so the VA can show that they are doing "something" with the claims backlog.

You go to the VA for a treadmill stress test and you will be stressed all right. Mine was really of poor quality with a false positive. The VA said severe ischemia, but that was not true. I got a chemical stress test and everything was fine. Of course, I could have had a false positive and then a false negative. The only real way to tell is a heart cath, and I am not ready for that. The VA is not the place to go for heart troubles.

You know I may break even with taxes because I get taxed on my SSD. I happen to get a small annuity from the post office, and I made some investments when I was making money so I get some taxable income. Taxing my SSD is a real kick in the yarbels. I get taxed on my post office disability pension as well. I need a tax break. I did what Americans are supposed to do. I worked and invested my surplus and now my tax dollars are going to crooked banks and Wall Street gangsters. I don't make a lot of taxable income, but I pay taxes. I don't like to see it given away to a bunch of crooks. To really make it in America you have to be a thief.