6 Proven Ways to Increase VA Disability Rating This Year! (2022)

I can only imagine your stress. Have you considered appointing a VSO to assist with your VA claims? Just out of curiosity, were you considered P&T? (Permanent and total )with champus benefits?

SGT Jodi WittBailey Thank you ror responding. I used the VSO who tried to help and I had an advocate, the American Legion, who did jack squat to assist. I've thought about P&T, but I don't think I can keep working with it. (I'm a teacher.)

I'll tag you in the long post I made on it the other day.

SGT Jodi WittBailey Actually, it wouldn't let me. The commit wasn't valid.

SGT Jodi WittBailey - Eh, I can't figure it out. I'll just repost it here. Forgive the wall of text.
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I shouted for help at the time, but I was calling into the wind and at brick walls for all the good it did me then. None of the lawyers I spoke with would take my case and my VA advocate, the American Legion, never even returned my calls.
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Background: I left the Navy in January 2007, processed out because I was hurt during my service and the treatments I received were not fixing my condition. [Specifically, I hurt my neck and mid-back in an on-duty accident in 2002 and it was made progressively worse as I continued on submarine duty. In June of 2005, my condition was such that I was sent off the boat, transient, so that I could be treated. I went back to the boat in September but by January 2006, it was clear that I couldn't stay on submarine duty. I was again sent off the ship for transient duty, disqualified submarines, and med boarded. The board decided to "discharge me into the care of the VA." There's actually another story about how I had to go to the Board for the Correction of Naval Records to get my discharge recharacterized to stop recoupment of my SRB, but that's beyond the scope and I will leave it for another day.]
I put in for a VA disability right away, and I was awarded 10% service connection for "lower thoracic spine strain" in October 2007, backdated to February of that year. It's not strictly accurate, as it is *mid* thoracic spine strain, but whatever. I also started seeing a psychiatrist at the VA because of how much it was affecting my mood, etc. I always felt that the rating should be higher because my pain and my restricted motion interfered with my daily routine so much and in November 2009, I filed a claim to raise the rating. Rather than do that, they added "depressive disorder associated with lower thoracic spine strain" at 70% in April 2010. Without me filing a claim, they raised it to 100% in July 2010, effective March of that year. (I've since seen the diagnostic criteria for it, and I met them. I still do, but more on that in a bit.) They also raised my lower thoracic spine strain rating to 20%. I was 100% overall.
In 2015, I was scheduled for a five-year review and in October 2015 they determined that while my condition had improved slightly, it had not improved enough to warrant lowering my service-connection rating and it was kept. In December 2017, I had to go in for an exam with a VA contractor, but I wasn't informed of why at the time, just that I had to go see this doctor on this date and time.

The Reduction: In January 2018, I received a notice of propose reduction from 100% on my depressive disorder to 70%. Quoting the letter: "We have reviewed medical records concerning your service-connected conditions and noted some improvement in your Major depressive disorder. Based on this evidence, we are proposing to reduce your prior evaluation of its overall disabling effect. The combined evaluation for all of your service-connected disabilities will drop from 100% to 80%." I immediately went to the County Veteran Service Office and they helped me file a Notice of Disagreement and a Statement in Support of Claim to request a personal hearing. It was apparently approved, as I continued to receive compensation at the 100% rate past the 60 days after which they said the reduction would go into effect.
I continued to wait for my hearing. While I did, the County VSO convinced me that requesting a service-connection determination for the other conditions I developed in the service (meralgia paresthetica and peripheral neuropathy, noted in my medical records, but not named or officially diagnosed until long after I got out) would affect the current appeal I was working on. I requested service connection for them in September 2018.
On November 8, less than two months later, I received a letter stating that I was denied service connection for meralgia paresthetica and peripheral neuropathy because, again quoting the letter, "While your service treatment records reflect complaints, treatment, or a diagnosis similar to that claimed, the medical evidence supports the conclusion that a persistent disability was not present in service. We received your medical evidence which discusses the symptoms of your medical condition. The evidence does not show that your disease developed to a compensable degree within the specified time period after release from service to qualify for the presumption of service connection." So, basically, we see that it was there in your medical records, but you weren't diagnosed at the time because of the other stuff you had going on, so DENIED.
Then, as I continued to wait for (1) my hearing for my depressive order reduction and (2) time to see the VSO to file a Notice of Disagreement for the denial of service-connection, I received another letter from the VA, dated November 19, 2018. They stated, "The predetermination letter, dated January 16, 2018, notified you of our proposed decision and gave you 60 days to respond if you had any additional evidence to submit. As the evidence from the Palo Alto VAMC (Veterans Affairs Medical Center), continues to show a 100 percent evaluation is not currently warranted, the evaluation for your depressive disorder is decreased to 70 percent disabling, effective February 1, 2019." I went to the County VSO to again file a Notice of Disagreement and find out how to appeal that. He suggested I talk to my VA psychiatrist. She affirmed that my condition hadn't improved AT ALL (emphasis hers). I was still finding it hard to do basic tasks or care for myself and I was still experiencing suicidal ideations. (Note: I still do, even now in 2022.) She had no clue how they were basing their opinion that my condition had shown had improved. (Apparently, after five years, there has to be sustained improvement over time. I noted that, although my 2015 letter mentioned improvement, the 2018 letter only said "a 100% rating is not currently warranted".) I went back to the VSO and filed another notice. I don't know what happened to that one as it was never acknowledged.
The reduction from 100% to 70% on my depressive disorder and 100% to 80% overall went into effect February 1, 2019. I wanted to appeal, but I couldn't find anyone to help me. As I said in the beginning, none of the lawyers I spoke with would help me even though they had all said to talk to them after the reduction went into effect. As I also said, the American Legion never even bothered to return my calls. The two-year period for appealing both claim decisions ran out and I never even got to pursue them.
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I spoke with a social worker at the VA sometime last year and he suggested I might be able to do some other things, like get the rating for my thoracic spine strain raised as that has only gotten worse over time and to get file a new claim to get my rating returned back to 100%, but I can't see myself doing any of those things right now. My faith in the system is gone after getting railroaded like that. Maybe you can look at it and see it as something else, but I feel like I got railroaded and those who could have helped me stood by and watched it happen.

All of this was with people looking at my records. I teach computer science and I know the skewing and unconscious biases that go into such automated decision-making processes. I have no faith in this one either.