Representatives of the Veterans Administration and veterans’ service organizations have a unified message for military veterans seeking to file disability claims with the VA: get help and don’t try to file the claim on your own.
“It’s sort of like going into court without a lawyer; you really need to know how to get the maximum amount of your VA benefits,” said Denise Boyd, one of two military benefits counselors assigned by the Veterans' Administration to Fort Leonard Wood, during an April 28 forum on veterans issues sponsored by the Waynesville-St. Robert Chamber of Commerce.
Only about 16 percent of veterans file their own claims, according to Stanley Baughn, the director of veterans' service programs for the Missouri Veterans Commis-sion, and most of those who do probably shouldn’t.
“It is a very complex field and it is very difficult,” Baughn said. “If a veteran files the claim by themselves, according to VA statistics, they will get substantially less money than if they go to an accredited service officer because they don’t know the questions to ask themselves to get their full range of benefits. We’re trained to do that.”
Baughn said the state-sponsored Missouri Veterans Commission is only one of many groups to which veterans can turn for help. Major national veterans organizations including the Disabled American Veterans help train service officers to understand the details of federal regulations on disability ratings.
“If you want to know what the rating would be because you are missing the end of your thumb, that will tell you,” Baughn said. “Everything is covered in excruciating detail.”
It typically takes up to a year of training and experience before a veterans’ service officer becomes comfortable with the federal benefits rules, Baughn said.
Boyd said it’s important to gather all the facts and details necessary to make a disability claim.
“One thing I want to note is with us and with any service organization that is working as advocates with us, it’s very important that the person be knowledgeable regarding their VA benefits and produce all the evidence that is required,” Boyd said. “A lot of veterans don’t understand that we have to go by what’s under the law and what’s in the evidence and we interpret the evidence based on the laws and the regulations.”
Responding to audience questions about how veterans should handle disabilities that get progressively worse with time, Boyd said veterans who believe their condition has worsened can and should file a claim to change their disability rating.
That’s good advice, Baughn said, not only because health conditions can deteriorate but also because federal standards for rating disabilities have changed with time.
“If you have a heart attack, would you never go back to the doctor again after you recovered from it?” Baughn asked. “Once you get your rating from the VA, you need to go in for a ratings checkup occasionally. Things do change, conditions worsen, laws are changed. Go back in for a checkup once in a while; it certainly doesn’t hurt.”
Dalton Wright, chairman of the Missouri Military Preparedness and Enhance-ment Commission, said traumatic brain injuries have become a “gray area” for disability ratings and that’s a particularly serious problem with the current combat environment.
“With the overpressures that occur in a lot of the armored vehicles that they ride in when they get hit by the IEDs, if you know anybody that may have suffered - and a lot of this doesn’t show up immediately and it’s hard to measure — in some cases it shows up with seizures and all kinds of other disabilities that may be down the road,” Wright said.
“My advice would be to be sure you have an advocate,” Wright said, noting that the transition for a veteran from the active duty medical care system to the Veterans Administration has sometimes been a problem.
“I think it has improved dramatically; the wounded warrior program has been a godsend for our young injured soldiers,” Wright said. “But even now occasionally someone will be handed stuff to sign and may not even comprehend what it is.”
Baughn said any Missouri veteran who may have a traumatic brain injury or possibly be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder should contact Pat Roker, a staff member in his office, at (573) 751-3779. Baughn said Roker is “absolutely relentless” in advocating for veterans care, especially for hard-to-classify diagnoses such as PTSD and traumatic brain injuries.
Maj. Gen. John Havens, the retired adjutant general of the Missouri National Guard, said there’s no reason veterans in Missouri or any other state with legitimate medical claims need to suffer.
“There are millions and millions of dollars that are going unclaimed that our veterans are authorized out there,” Havens said.