Hey, veterans, Travis Studdard, veterans disability attorney here talking to you today again about
your VA disability rating for a cardiac or heart-related condition.
I want to talk to you a little bit about a situation that I've seen in some of the heart-related
ratings cases that I've handled, where the VA, either intentionally or perhaps by error,
I don't really know, but it seems pretty straightforward to me, but I keep seeing this in their ratings
decisions, where they're creating error.
Of course, that error is not in your favor.
It's giving you a lower disability rating than what you're really entitled to.
Here's what I'm talking about, and I'm going to go through an example with you to make
this a little bit clearer.
But I'm an attorney, and to attorney, words mean something.
Every word in a statute, every word in a code section, has a particular meaning, and each
word in there has some importance.
There's actually a case law saying that every word that's included in a statute or regulation
should be considered and given its full importance.
Here's how the VA is not doing that in some situations.
Some of these ratings for heart-related disabilities have, let's say, three different ways that
you can get a rating at a particular ratings level.
You can have this symptom or objective finding, or this one, or this one, one, two, or three.
The VA, in a little bit of sleight of hand, or whatever you want to call it, takes out
"or" and mandates that veterans prove "and."
You must have one, and two, and three.
As you can see, most veterans are probably not going to have all three of those findings,
but they may have one of those three, and therefore, they should get that rating at
that particular level.
Let me tell you an example here, and this is one that I've dealt with in the past.
Arteriosclerotic heart disease, also known as coronary artery disease, let's just look
at the 100% level.
I've got the language right here.
"You can qualify for a 100% rating, if you have chronic congestive heart failure, or
a workload of three MetS or less that result in cardiac symptoms, or you can have left
ventricular dysfunction with an ejection fraction of less than 30%."
If you're saying, "What is MetS, and what is left ventricular dysfunction, and ejection
fraction?"
I go through that in one of my previous videos on diagnostic testing.
You can check that out and learn more about what exactly those terms mean.
But here, for purposes of this example, we don't have to know exactly what those mean.
It's more that I want to illustrate the point of, you can have the heart failure, or symptoms
at a particular level of exertion, or you can have diminished ability of the heart to
pump blood out.
You only have to have one of those three.
But what I've seen the VA doing is saying, in this particular case I'm thinking of, they
said, "You have a MetS score of three or less.
However, your ejection fraction is not less than 30%.
Therefore you do not qualify for a 100% rating.
You stay at 60%."
Guess what, VA?
That's not what the regulation and the diagnostic code section says.
It says you have to have one or the other.
Curiously, they ignored the congestive heart failure altogether.
They didn't say, "You don't have that one and that's another reason that you don't get
the 100%."
Again, if you are denied the higher rating level that you think you deserve, look to
see the reasoning behind it.
Did VA say, "Yes, you met one of those criteria, but you didn't meet all three, or you didn't
meet two of the three."
You only have to meet one, if it says "or" instead of "and."
Don't let them switch it up and make more requirements for you than what the law requires.
Again, this is a trick I see the VA doing.
It results in ratings less than what they should be for deserving veterans, but again,
a lot of times, that veteran gets a 60% rating and says, "Hey, I won.
That's great."
Guess what?
Maybe they should've gotten a 100% rating, which is a considerable difference in monthly
benefits.
Again, if you get a ratings decision with that, look for that.
If you have any questions, I'll be glad to review that ratings decision for you and help
you appeal that, if I find an error in their substitution of "and" and "or," or on any
of the other grounds that they commonly create error in.
Hope that helps.
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Go to our website, winyourvetclaim.com for more information on how we may be able to
help, or how you can handle your claim yourself.
Thanks for watching today.