GBArmy

It is $140 because it is Spouse A&A-homebound and YOUR rating is currently 100%.The monthly rate is based on the VETERAN's combined rating, and it starts at a 30% rate. For example, a veteran's wife will get $129.00 a month if the veteran's rating is 80%. The theory is that the veteran can't assist with the wife's daily activities as well because he himself is disabled to a certain degree, so they add SMC-s to the veteran's monthly comp. It's not a lot, but it is something for the veterans' dependant on top of his own disabilities.

Bionic Vet Standard procedure with the VA. They won't tell you anything at 800-827-1000 until 10 weekday workdays have gone by. Call on the tenth day and ask for the re-send; they will email (or fax) a copy to you within minutes. So I would be calling today, the 10th work day. The mail delivery is really bad now days; it takes about 3 weeks from the date of the letter to actually received the mailed copy. AS for your FOIA, send in an IRIS report https://iris.custhelp.va.gov/ and request response in writing. Good luck.

Cloudbuster Sure, You can submit a disability claim for anything. I am assuming you have a VA disability for PTSD; what is your rating? Do you have any other disabilities also approved ? What you want to do is find out what the diagnosis was by the VA specifically; that is, for example PTSD with MDD and anxiety. Your looking to see if your headaches is part of the diagnosis for your MH condition. If it isn't called out in your decision letter, you should be able to get it by requesting your rating sheet from the VA. Call 800-827-1000. Tell them you want a confirmation of your disability ratings make-up. Or, just get copies from the VA of all the notes concerning your disability. If headaches are not called out as part of your diagnosis, you should be able to claim a new disability for them. (The VA is rating your disability based on your symptoms; kinda like the more symptoms, the higher rating.) Including headaches as part of your diagnosis means that they are including that symptom as part of your comp. It can be secondary to your MH condition. Veterans re-apply for disabilities all the time after being denied. Doesn't matter whether it is primary or secondary. In fact, when submitting a claim for the first time, it is often better not to call out whether it is primary or secondary. Let the VA decide what it is. And just to add, there may be other disabilities that can be secondary to headaches, like sleep apnea, complications from meds, etc.

John999 I would think your best option is to do what you did, which is call your Congressman. The only other thing I also would do is try to get hold of the director who would be responsible for providing the benefit at your RO. There is no way that they can get away with this. It could end up, however, as win the battle but lose the war. That is :ok veteran, you got the political guys involved, but we are going to deny. Hopefully, that won't happen. What they can get away with though is the excuse that they must protect their VA employees by using video conference, so we are delaying your claim until it is safe to meet face to face.

Kuwaitin08 One of the problems I see often with the VA is that once a claim for a particular disability is denied, the VA is blind in one eye and can't see out of the other when it comes to appeals. They have a tendency to ignore new evidence and/or past evidence. If the facts are as you said you injured your back and made the claim less than 1 year of discharge, the VA makes that presumptive now. Don't know when they started doing that so you have to see if you have a legal argument on that. Just because it isn't found to be presumptive, doesn't mean it can't be s-c though. Was it documented; did you get copies of your STR's? And, if you reinjured again in 2008, hopefully you were a little more careful and you have your STR's for that event. So, bottom line, you were denied for not being s-c. You need to get a new current diagnosis on your back condition, and get a good IMO from a doc that knows VA-speak. You need a strong diagnosis or this is going to be 3 strikes. Get the disability, then you can see if you can connect back on a EED for 2000 or 2008. You didn't have continuity on processing your claim, so your only chance would be a CUE event. But don't fret about that now, just get this granted first.

Hi RMF Welcome to Hadit. The VA usually rates insomnia as a MH condition and symptoms can be anxiety or depression. You have the MH disability ratinhg now and all MH disabilities except for PTSD are rated using the same criteria. So to get more you must display MORE severe symptoms that bump you up to a higher rating. Here is a good place to start. https://cck-law.com/blog/va-disability-benefits-for-insomnia/

McRay It can simply be the luck of the draw; sometimes you can get a very reasonable VA rep like SPO did, and much more often a rep that doesn't know where to get your info or doesn't really care about helping you. I tell you what, though; when I get the first type, I make sure they understand that they were very helpful and I appreciated their help. I should expect that by doing that, they may be encouraged to do it again to another veteran calling on info. Anyway, that's the way I roll. One addition to add; to me, it seems more often than not you get better assistance from a VA rep that just happens to be a Veteran also! There are many who are veterans that have an idea what veterans have gone thru.

Hi Wolfman Welcome to Hadit. If you're 100% P&T, sure. I think you have a good case; but, as you know, you need a nexus for a secondary claim. Get your heart doc to do a nexus/IMO for you. Just because it is straight forward, the veteran himself can't diagnose med opinions by themselves. You need a diagnosis of the heart condition and it is in your best interest to provide it when you submit your claim, rather than expect the VA to make the connection IMHO. If you use the VA for cardiology, get an outside opinion instead.

SPO Nice info to pass on. I'll certainly give it a shot!

Hi John Welcome to Hadit. Carefully review your decision letter. I'm going to think that the VA denied because not service connection. And maybe not a current sleep study. Maybe you could redact your personal info, like name, etc. and post it to this thread. You have some elements but we need to see more.

Buck This can be serious. I had a similar accident; ended up a lot of stitches and loss of feeling due to nerve damage. We all learn by making mistakes. But a chain saw cut is nasty in that you have to be very careful of infection, and if you don't seek out medical care you can end up with an even worse condition. Like loss of use of your entire hand or even arm. How are you going to help your wife then?Time is really important. Pull out a favor and get someone to cover for you while you go to the emergency room. Things can and sometimes do get worse. Do it!! We're all glad to hear you got to the doc, Buck. Now, get back on the VA-claim horse!

Pootie Tang Welcome to Hadit. The answer is a "maybe." Did you get a copy of your C-file? Get it. You need to find out details of that finding and what the details were on your award. What did you file for specifically (within 1 year of discharge?) Were you treated for PTSD within the first year? It is possibly presumptive. It will be tricky, in my opinion as they will say it was your responsibility to file. IMHO I would get a lawyer; they also have to determine what was the law at the time of the claim. There are several good legal groups referenced here on Hadit.

Hamslice Good for you on the increase. "Sometimes you win anyway" may be true, but I would suggest that the veteran doesn't count on it. Are you 100% P&T scheduler? Or, TDIU?

Buck This can be serious. I had a similar accident; ended up a lot of stitches and loss of feeling due to nerve damage. We all learn by making mistakes. But a chain saw cut is nasty in that you have to be very careful of infection, and if you don't seek out medical care you can end up with an even worse condition. Like loss of use of your entire hand or even arm. How are you going to help your wife then?Time is really important. Pull out a favor and get someone to cover for you while you go to the emergency room. Things can and sometimes do get worse. Do it!!

One thing is for sure, the number of times that the VA short changes us on EED has to be a policy. It means saving a lot up front for their budget, and often, the veteran is so happy to finally get the award they don't run the numbers, or, just don't want to deal with it anymore. If it really was a "mistake", the VA could fix it by training. Since it is getting worse, not better, the VA sees it is in their best interest not to train. I hope you get your correct back pay; $35K can buy a lot of beans. Good luck on that.

Buck I knew she was recovering from major (common???) surgery and all but man she really has gone thru a lot. And what it sounds like, she will be housebound even after "recovery" with everything else she had, so that's why it is awarded. If you didn't get your decision letter yet, you can go into ebenefits and click on to "My Benefits & payments". Under Supplementary Benefits it should show Spouse A & A. I you go to VA.gov and the "letters" section it will show your new current monthly award amount, which will include your extra SMC. You might want to look up if there is a limit on how many SMC awards you can have, based on your current rating. I believe it is limited on certain levels of SMC.

Buck A&A for a DEPENDANT is a fairly underused/unknown VA benefit. It goes to compensate the disabled veteran because his own disabilities is an added burden for a disabled or housebound dependant. We just started to get it for my wife's condition; $129 a month at my 80% rate. !00% should be an additional few more for this SMC. My understanding is that since your doc determined she can't function , like leave the house, the comp is considered "static" and you don't have to submit anything again unless her condition really approves.

Pacmanx1 Appreciate your response. I understand the proposal to reduce by the VA. What I was specifically looking for was a veteran rated disability is rated "static." Before 5 years are up, he has tor go for a C&P exam. Can the VA drop the "static" designation, which I would assume would then open him up for future re-exams. Just curious if anyone has seen that happen.

DevilDocJay Welcome to Hadit and congrats on your disability award. Service connection is the hard part. GERD is rated under VA diagnostic code 7346; look up the criteria to meet to get from 10 to 30%. If you do indeed have those symptoms in your records, you could just submit a HLR appeal with a new statement in support of the case. In matters of judgement of facts, I wouldn't. The DRO is more than likely just going to rubber stamp the 10% rating. What I would do is go to a specialist that will fill out a dbq for you that confirms that in his/her opinion your symptoms deserve the higher rating. An increase from 10% to 30% goes from $144 to $441 a month. IMHO it's worth the investment getting you a payback within a few months. No matter what, you need to submit some type of appeal within a year of your letter to get the EED alive back to your original submittal date.

Smokie They could connect it as secondary to tinnitus; read your decision letter and get a copy of your C&P exam. You could file and see but you would be better off going on the offensive and getting a IMO from a specialist saying it was not associated with the depression but occurred before, especially if your med records shows some entry. However, if you also get headaches, check out diagnostic code 8100 and see if would result in a rating.

Hi Smokie Welcome to Hadit. The VA rolls up and combines disabilities where they can and then gives the highest rating based on all the rated symptoms you have. Once they grant the disability you can't claim that same disability again as symptoms of another disability. That is called pyramiding. It happens quite often with MH disabilities as it can be hard to definitely say the symptom is connected to anxiety as opposed to depression, for example. So they give the higher rating but you can't get two seperate ratings for the same disability, in this example MH. See https://cck-law.com/blog/pyramiding-how-to-avoid-stacking-your-va-ratings/ Just a thought but did you also put in for a hearing disability seperate throm the tinnitus? If not, you should consider; it would be a separate disability than tinnitus. Check and see if you actually claimed it.

Waccamawwild Congrats! 80% protected and they can't reduce; must give you a great deal of relief. Now, you're still working on getting the 100% with the same timeline. Nice going.

Thanks, Brokensoldier. That is what I was thinking but sometimes VA and logic doesn't always work. It would be interesting to see if others have the same situation. I didn't see it covered in M21.

I'd appreciate opinions on a veteran awarded a disability classified as "static." Prior to 5 years passing, he requests an increase which results in the a new C&P. If no improvement in disabilities (or if they got worse and the VA awarded a higher rating), can the VA drop the "static" classification and advise a future exam will be required? Or, does it have to be classified as static because that is what it was before? Anyone have any experience on this situation?

BJWhite Welcome to Hadit. Stick around and maybe learn something that may be useful to you. If you're at 60% combined rating, that means you have some serious issues. Think about secondaries. For example, you can develope MH issues of anxiety and or depression because you may isolate and not venture out, join in family or friend gatherings, etc. If you have to also take ointments and creams for your skin condition, you could qualify for a clothing allowance of $800 a year. Your mileage may vary.