john999

We are taught not to complain which is the worst thing not to do if you use the VA. You must complain all the time about everything. The louder you complain the more money you get. The system is sick and hurts vets, but if you want the money you have to be Foghorn Leghorn when it comes to calling attention to your problems that might be SC. It really is a system that is destructive to the moral center of us. If you get better you earn less. What kind of crap is that? When you get a rating that should be set in stone if you get better or not. If vets with 50% knew they rating could not be touched and they were actually helped to help themselves there might be fewer 100% vets. Who wants to be p&t at age 30? Nobody does but that is often what it takes just to survive. John

There is a reason why they call him Notorious! What I got took over 35 years and I am still fighting. My shrink told me how they do it for MH conditions. Usually you get maybe 30%. Time goes by and you file for increase. Maybe you get 50% this time. Finally when you can't work any more you get 70%-100% and maybe TDIU or just scheduler 100%.

I recently had a $100,000 dollar hospital bill for very new operation for OSA. Medicare paid for it along with a few thousand from my medigap. Medicare does not pay what hospital charges. They might pay 25% because almost all hospitals take assignment as does Blue Cross. I can tell you that the most minor surgery can become life and death if you get a drug resistant staff infection. I got one from a doctor's office and four years later my foot still hurts. A nice chunk of my foot had to be cut out simply from getting a shot deep in my foot. Gastone, I know what you are saying. The VA owes you the best of care. The VA should be the light on the hill for medical care. They are not by any means. They are years behind IMO. I sure would never put money over my health. I can't believe I got that staff infection and what it turned into. 6 weeks on daily infusions of antibiotic soup and daily repacking of a wound in my foot that made me jump and shout. If you have ever had a deep wound unpacked with gauze and then repacked with long wooden sticks you would never not have Medicare A&B. If I had to have my wife drive me for 6 weeks and 7 days a week to the VA I would just shoot myself.

The VBM did help me get SC'ed for CAD as secondary to DMII. I was just reading about secondary symptoms of DMII and I saw where clots or calcification of arteries in the legs is often connected to DmII. I talked to my VA doctor at the time and she backed me and I filed a claim and eventually got 60% for CAD. I am not sure how it all worked, but I kept on appealing and getting more angry at shoddy treatment and C&P exams. I have never seen a VA cardiologist and never hope to see one. John

Are you supposed to pray to J.H. Christ for relief from symptoms? Are you selling a book? The VBM is much better. I must say it sounds like complete bullshit to me. "Transforming Trauma in Combat Veterans" by what method? Many say a prayer just before blowing their brains out.

If you are TDIU and you don't go back to work you just send VA the Employment Questionnaire at least once a year on TDIU anniversary date. Certified mail of course. I have been TDIU for 13 years and no C&P. The only real way they can tell you are better is if you go back to work. Unless you can gross about $100,000 for life keep the TDIU. Did you file for SSDI based on being TDIU? I would. John

I think a bearskin rug would look good on your floor. VA bearskin that is, heh, heh. Skin the bear before he skins you. If you went to DVA NSO he will beg you not to ask for an increase. I heard this for years. If you have the evidence then file the claim is what I think. I must have filed 7-8 claims since I got TDIU back in 2001. I won almost all because the evidence was there and I got IME to back me. I would not file a claim just for the hell of it. John

Berta "FISHGATE" ha,ha you and K9MAL with a fish sandwich in the face. If you had been an actual vet exposed to AO the VA would be crying and weeping to see you come in the door. You probably would have been with Ken Carpenter giving them the fresh fish in the face special. Every time you kick the VA in the %$#$% bells sound a heavenly choir. It is Christmas and it is the time of giving. I want Santa to give everyone working at the RO the present of food poisoning via a fish sandwich. Maybe Santa could just drop a big fish burger on top of St. Pete VARO. We should fill our souls with love and forgiveness to all except I can't. 40 years of neglect and abuse from the VA deserves more than a fish fry. Possible that my brain responds poorly to Christmas time, but image of VA Secretary being hit by 40lb flounder makes me laugh.

If I am having a heart attack or bleeding to death does anyone think it is a good idea to ask to go to VA ER? It would take me half an hour to get there. If you have medicare or other insurance go to nearest ER if you want to live. Do you want to recover in a VA hospital? Think about it. Hospitals are very dangerous places. Incurable staff infections infests them. The faster you get out the longer you will live. Doctors and hospitals killed my mother and almost killed me from infections. John

We should go block VARO and say "Your are choking me with your incompetence. I can't breath!" You see how much attention a few thousand protestors get about a shooting. We vets could raise holy hell with the VA. The RO's need to be torn down brick by brick. Nobody more arrogant that some VA staffers who thinks vets are all"gimmes". I have experienced that attitude even when VA was awarding me a rating. "We are giving you this rating you undeserving, rotten, fish burger". " Please die soon". You can know regs. backwards and forwards and still end up in appeal for a decade. I know I am at that place now. We need to become VA insurgents. You do have to use the enemy's weapons since that is all we have to fight with in the VA, but you are still going to get a fish sandwich in the face. Berta who is VA expert and long suffering widow/spouse knows that even the best claim can turn into McFish in a hurry. I can hardly walk some days but I would hold sigh at RO to tell the world "We hate fish sandwich from VA"' That motto from Berta may catch on. John

That would be fast as lightening for the VA. God knows if it works do it. I may email Bob and tell him to fix my wife and all the nuts on my side of the family including myself. Bob is like God. You just ask and you shall receive. If you ask for 100% would Bob hand you a serpent?

I think vets are much smarter now than in my day. I think OIF/OEF has generated a couple of hundred thousand claims at least with no end in sight. With lowering barrier for PTSD and inclusion of new AO presumed the VA will never catch up. It is impossible for them to tie shoes and chew gum at the same time. Every one of my decisions right or wrong has been screwed up in some way. They get something grossly wrong. The internet and websites like Hadit help younger vets a lot. They don't have to depend on dumb ass DAV or VFW. Those two actually caused my claims to be denied in the past with screwball reasoning like asking for compensation for a personality disorder I did not even have. Thank you VFW. This was in the 80's but nothing has changed. John

I don't know but I am afraid of opening attached files. What is causing the backup? My opiate medications cause concrete jungle in my intestines. Morphine was the worst. I needed plumber more than a doctor.

I think if you were entitled to TDIU and "S" before you became 100% scheduler then you should have an EED for "S". How much time are we talking about for the EED for "S"? You got to wonder if you have enough time left in life to pursue it. If it is a lot of money I would hire a lawyer and forget about it if you can get a legal eagle to take the case. They do like the easy money most of the time unless you have my lawyer. I got "S" via a CUE and I had TDIU. I did get retro of about 2 years for S. I just asked the obvious question as to why I did not get "S" since I was Total plus 80%. Oops......The VA forgot. John

Well, a DIC spouse can get A&A which is a form of SMC I think. I think a DIC spouse can get HB as well. It is really a small amount when you think of it. I think the spouse should be able to get what the vet got in life. If I take the famous "dirt nap" then my spouse would get my SSA as a survivor benefit. However, she only gets about 40% of my VA compensation. If she is 75 years old is she supposed to get a job to make ends meet? The civil service pension is about the same with a 50% cut from what I get as a retiree. If my wife had to pay the civil service insurance her survivor pension would be blown away. I don't see why spouses need to be driven to the poor house because their vet dies. I know Uncle Sam thinks that every 85 year old disabled vet would marry an 18 year old just for the DIC. Those in power still consider soldiers as a lower order of scum like the Iron Duke, Wellington said of his own troops that beat the French. Gentlemen just don't serve as enlisted and are from the lower orders. Their widows can exist on air and handouts from guys like Wounded Warriors project where CEO gets rich doing what the public should do. John

My aunt got DIC and was in a nursing home her last year of lie. I got A&A for her which did help a bit. She was able to pay for the care she got due to her SSA, DIC, A&A and her pension. She had money in a trust that she never had to touch until the funeral. However, she was out of her mind and let a neighbor in Conyers, GA. talk her into putting all her assets into a trust with SunBank. When my sister and I found out what the neighbor had done we were pissed. SunTrust will hold onto trust money and fight you for every dime if you try and transfer the money into less expensive hands. Many older and senile people begin to think others are plotting against them. My poor deluded aunt thought we were after her money. We did not even know until we found out she had a trust and that neighbor had hijacked her car as payment for turning her against her family. All SunTrust did for a fee of $3000 a month was pay her bills such as she had which were nil. I fought many rounds with Sunbank and since my aunt still trusted my mother she let me be the personal representative for the trust. I was able to put here assets into high dividend stocks and bonds so she had a good cash flow in case she needed it. The bank was content to let the money sit in MM account as long as they got their fees. Banks are not to be trusted except maybe your own checking or savings account for "mad money" you want 100% safe. Nobody in my family had ever had a "trust" or IRA or pension that was decent. I got an Elder Care lawyer when my mother began to lose her marbles. It was a sad sight to see that she could not even make a check out anymore and my brother had to pay all the bills for her. This is when certain people will take advantage of elderly. No one wants to admit they have lost their wits to the extent they must be looked after, but usually if you live long enough it happens. It happened to my old granddad in Ireland who used to go to the Pub in his underwear. "Drinks on the House" ! John John

Because I had to retire due to SC conditions at age 51 I probably lost many thousands of bucks in pension, SSA and my contribution to FERS Thrift Savings. I used to contribute 15% of my before tax pay to Thrift Savings. All that lost due to SC conditions. Back in 2001 I was making about $25 an hour. To me that was a lot of money. Because investments I made I think I broke even, but if I lost TDIU at age 65 that would knock me back to 90% rating and wife would lose ChampVA. That would cost me and dislocate my plans for the future for me and my wife. She would lose possible DIC unless I died from one of the AO conditions. I have five. These budget hawks don't consider all these complications to doing away with TDIU for older vets. How much do they think we get from SSDI anyway? I think the average is about $1300 a month. John

Any DX that mentions a personality disorder is bad news. A screw job is coming your way regards to MEB/PEB.

The rule is that if your vet has been totally disabled for ten years at least before he dies his widow would get DIC. You don't have to be P&T but just totally disabled for ten years. If you are married 8 years of those ten years before his/her death you get a few hundred dollars extra. If the vet dies from a SC condition the spouse also would be eligible for DIC. If the vet dies from an SC condition you also get some extra money for the burial.....$2000 or 2500 bucks I think for an SC death. If I die from an SC condition which I probably will I already told my spouse to claim both the ten year thing and direct SC death for the DIC. I just have to avoid getting hit by a beer truck, or dying of a non-AO cancer for a few more years. Since half the cancers in existence are SC for AO maybe they all will be by the time I am 80 years old so I can die with knowledge that the Army killed me, finally. I think the VA should just say if you served in Nam and you die you should be considered presumptive for AO. 2/3 of Nam vets are already dead. John

Chuck75 You just made a very good point. The IRS does look very closely at those who take home office deductions and all that goes with it. To take these kinds of deductions is a good way to get IRS on your Ass. The VA, SSA and IRS trade records (DEA also) so you should assume you are being looked at by all three as a disabled vet. You just don't want to draw attention of that kind to yourself if you are on TDIU. If you owned ten rental properties and just took the passive income as in rent that would be OK. However, if you started taking all kinds of deductions that go along with managing rental units then I think you could get heat from the VA. If you actively manage real estate or any other sorts of assets where you pay yourself a salary then you may have a problem. Face it. When you say you are TDIU you are saying you can't work. You can try and get up to the line with limited below poverty income but if you cross the line by a few inches you can get whacked. Imagine how the public sees you. They see some vet trying to scam the system even if you are just trying to stay busy. I don't even take money from these surveys or medical studies for new drugs. I have not worked for money or wages since I got TDIU and it will stay that way until I die or get 20 years at P&T. John John

Yeah, I got SSDI in three months and it took about 18 months to get TDIU. The VA took my medical records and looked at them with microscope to find a reason to deny TDIU the first 2 times I claimed it. John

I learned to claim whatever has documentation in my records before I chase after something that needs to be proved such as PTSD even if you have it. For some reason the VA wants to steer every vet into making a PTSD claim knowing it will take much time to validate all the stressor stuff. Also, the PTSD C&P exam contains a checklist a mile long. You can get 100% for MDD easier than PTSD if it is documented in your records. The VA SC'ed me for about five emotional disorders including PTSD, but I was compensated for only one which was my original claim back in 1973. If PTSD and MDD are co-morbid which means they make each other worse then that is OK. The thing is that depression, anxiety, symptoms of dissociative disorder and even hallucinations can be symptoms of PTSD and can stand alone as disorders. It is a real mess when some shrink tries to distinguish mental health symptoms in terms of compensation. They will probably throw in an anti-social personality disorder and TBI just for kicks. John

The VA is supposed to do many things but if you don't knock them in the head somehow they don't do it. I have no magic potions to make the VA do what they are supposed to do except to make claims and inquiries. If my claim indicated that I was permanently disabled I would appeal a denial right away. Why wait five years to get ChampVA for your wife and Kids? I wonder if it would be a CUE if the VA did not consider a condition you have had for five years at P&T? The VA has all this wiggle room we do not have. I know exactly what Phil is saying about what the VA is supposed to do such as consider every 100% vet for "housebound". In the past at least they hardly ever did this unless you had 100% plus 60%. Even in those cases they did not always do it until the vet claimed it. The vet is not supposed to have to claim it. The VA is supposed to read and consider all the evidence in a claim......ha,ha. I know they don't do that. John

Mike If you are just trading for yourself and taking gains and loses I don't think that would be earned income. I think if you were on VA compensation, as in TDIU, and you were day trading that would be a good case for a sanity hearing. Because I hired a money manager who rather drastically reallocated some of my assets I had some big capital gains of the long term type this year. These are passive gains. I am just hoping I am still in the 15% actual tax bracket, so I don't have to pay the capital gains tax. Capitalism is a wonderful thing for those who have some money to invest. I am in a low actual tax bracket because I have only SSD, pitiful civil service pension and investment income (interest, dividends and capital gains). Last year I paid no tax on qualified dividends and long term capital gains being below the 15% tax bracket. If you had say 20,000 in what is considered regular taxable income the income you got from dividends and capital gains would not even be taxed. You could earn $100,000 in long term capital gains and not pay a penny in tax. Ah, to be part of the 1%. This is why Warren Buffet says he is in a lower tax bracket than his secretary who works for her money while he just takes capital gains and loses and dividends. He made probably a couple of billion bucks last year and paid zero tax. Well, maybe he paid tax on his SSA, but I doubt it. I, a disabled vet on SSDI, paid tax on my OPM disability pension and on my SSDI because I had made some interest income and short term capital gains and because my OPM disability pension is fully taxable. I paid more tax than the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, because he lives on capital gains. He has 60 billion dollars and the manager of the local grocery store pays more tax than he does. He could afford to be a day trader, but he gets his kicks giving away money. He can't give it away fast enough. John John

The CUE claim is an attempt to have a claim that has become final overturned based on a legal error and/or some flaw in due process. Wait until you get to the CAVC with your CUE and they kill with the death of a thousand cuts. These impartial judges seem to agree with every objection to having my low ball decision revisited. You have to show the error would have the effect of changing the outcome of the decision. You have to show that "reasonable minds" agree that the mistake is a CUE. You must show that the error is "undebatable". All these things are difficult to say the least. I had the best VA legal eagle in the business and my claim was clobbered because it happened before the VA had to demonstrate that all the evidence in a claim was considered. Before 1990 or 1992 it was just assumed that the VA looked at every piece of evidence you sent them and carefully considered it. What a joke!!! My claim was decided in 1973 when you got no review of the evidence just a denial or approval. I did not know for years that my private doctor's report was most decidedly not considered. The BVA even admitted it, and still the VA at the CAVC was able to invoke the law before 1992 to say there was no error. Also, the VA said it was not "undebatable" that the possible omission of my doctor's report would have materially changed the outcome of the rating. That is hard to fight against those odds. The CUE error is not open to debate. It almost has to be a clerical error. I have heard it said that the CUE law is a Chimera and it is to an extent. It is a mythical creature that disappears before your eyes when you try to invoke it. This CUE of mine after 8 years is at federal court where I will probably lose again. The final words I got from the CAVC is that I should have appealed the rating in 1973. Yeah, I should have if they had not sent my appeal notice to the wrong address, but they can probably get out of that as well, but the vet can't get that "assumption of regularity" like the VA does when you mail them evidence and it gets lost ten time. t