Differences In States Compensation

[chess]

I recently read an article in the Columbus (Ohio) dispatch and they are saying that Ohio Veterans are the lowest compensated Vets of all. Illinios has moved up to about 6th place after Sen Barack Obama got very mad about a year ago and complained big time about the compensation disparity among states. In a nutshell, a Veteran is compensated an average of about $7000 per year in Ohio, while a New Mexico Veteran is compensated an average of about $4000 per year more. This is most likely to to the Cleveland Regional Office. Has any one else in Cleveland Regional Office been lowballed?

These are averages.

[Pete53]

Its a bunch of muglygump. Its the average for the entire state. With all the different payments the VA sends out this would be different in every State.

[tssnave]

Chess,

Perhaps this is what he was referring to:

http://www.va.gov/oig/52/reports/2005/VAOIG-05-00765-137.pdf

Now, on a related topic, I had bookmarked a website that gave a further breakdown of compensation by VARO for a ton of disabilities. In my case, I was able to go to the page for bipolar disorder and see how often my VARO rated bipolar disorder 100, 70, 50, 30, 10 % compared to other VAROs. It was an interesting bit of information if you like stats (numbers always make more sense to me than people do and I'm very concrete in my thinking - my abstract thinking sucks). However, that site is no longer available and I've been unable to find the information anywhere else. I never printed the graph which frustates me, but, since it was only statistical data and not really relevant to my particular claim I just took it as a lesson learned and now if there's something on the net I'm interested in, I print it out.

If anyone has another link to this information, I'd appreciate it. I can't locate the old website, the homepage of the newspaper or epaper I was at, or the information anywhere else. Very curious. Here's the dead link I used to use:

http://enterprise.star-telegram.com/clt/ve...432&o=at100

Thanks,

TS

[Jay Johnson]

To put it bluntly - the data is useless because it does not state the number of claims denied and/or the ratio of higher to lower ratings. In other words, if state "A" has 10 vets and 9 of them are rated at 100%, while one is rated at 10%, they will have an average payout of 2K or so, but if state "B" has 10 vets and 9 out of 10 of them are rated at 50% while one is rated at 30%, they would have an average payout far less than state "A". Neither is an example of one state paying more to vets than the other; rather, it's just a reflection of the number of severely disabled veterans who chose to live in said state.

A number that would worry me would be how many claims are denied and/or more specific data that shows that vets with similar symptoms are being rated higher in one state versus another (to which I have not seen data of this sort...mostly because the VA will not divulge it).

This is just a quick soundbite for politicians to use to point fingers at one-another in an election year (and the new media having NO understanding of the VA process).