(soft new age music)
- Hello and welcome to the Hill and Ponton
Veterans' Video Blog, I'm Mathew Hill.
- I'm Carole Ponton.
- And today we wanna talk about a question
we get all the time, and that is,
how do I get a 100% rating.
And we just see vets who are frustrated,
either they have a single disability they're trying
to get up to 100%, or they have multiple
disabilities that are combining together.
The thing about the VA rating system
is that it's counterintuitive, let's say.
It's not one plus one equals two,
it's 10% + 10% equals 19%,
and the closer you get to 100%, your ratings combined,
the harder it is to get 100%.
We have a veteran who came to us and had a 90% rating,
and then got a 40% rating on top of that,
well the way the VA math works,
that actually only equals 94%.
So the 4% goes away, and the veteran's rating...
- Rounds down to 90.
So it is is really hard, but we have
some thoughts on what you could do.
- Well, first of all, a lot of times
veterans will have, say they have a back problem,
and they are getting compensation for their back
but not the radiculopathy, or they could have...
- And radiculopathy is pain, loss of sensation,
loss of muscle tissue.
- Down either leg or both legs.
And veterans don't realize, you can get
ratings, very high ratings, for each leg.
And that will bring you up.
The other thing, what if there's incontinence?
What if there's erectile dysfunction.
There are a lot of things that can go with
just the one problem that they have.
Including depression, a lot of times people
are very depressed because the back limits them so much
in ability to work or to do other things.
So that's the first thing, or have you filed
everything you should file in connection with your claims?
And these are for people on both sides,
but if you're working, that's your option,
that's what you have to do.
If you're not working, make sure you file
the unemployability, because once you file that
they have to consider whether the
disabilities that you have keep you from working.
And if they do, they'll grant you 100%
under unemployability.
- Yeah, so going back to the back,
you see this a lot with some of the bigger disabilities,
back, diabetes, I think heart, TBI in particular,
but it'll be the main disability
they'll have a rating for it,
Parkinson's is another huge one,
but then there's all the problems that it causes,
and those can be higher ratings.
You know with the back, a pretty common rating
unfortunately is a 20%, a veteran with a 20% rating
to me has a very severe back problem.
But it's almost easier to get a 20%
rating and another 20% rating for both legs
for the radiculopathy than it is to get a higher rating
on the back itself, so as Carol said,
you wanna put everything out there
that it might be causing so that you can get
ratings for individual pieces, and hopefully
get you up to 100%, but if you get stuck,
say you have that back where it's 20%
and the two 20%s for the legs, don't quote me on this
but I think that's 60%.
- Right, because it's one common etiology.
- Yeah, and so that would give you eligibility
right there for unemployability, and that's a way
to get out of this rat trap, if you will,
of the way they put ratings together,
because you're fighting tooth and nail
for another 10% here, 20% there,
and your rating doesn't even go up.
So again, that would be something
if your disability, service connected disability
is preventing you from working,
then that's something to apply for there.
As far as your ratings combining together,
I'd invite you to look in our VA rating calculator,
essentially, it puts all the ratings together
for you and lets you know what your ratings combine to
and what you might need as far as a further rating
to get the higher rating you want.
- Because remember this is complicated,
you know the VA, first of all, if you have
a 40% disability, they consider that only 60% of your body
is left, so the next time you get a rating,
the rating is 20% times 60%, not 100%,
so you're left with 12 rounded down to 10.
And then there's another concept called,
say that both legs are impaired and they're rated,
then they give you a little extra for that,
so that's why it's really hard to do it
without this table, this calculator that we have,
but it will tell you where you are.
But another thing I wanted to talk about Matt,
when you have, say the person is still working,
if they get Parkinson's, a lot of time
they'll just give them 30%.
- Right.
- And that's for Parkinson's, but they're not
considering weakness in your legs,
difficulty walking.
- Difficulty talking.
- Difficulty talking, thinking, remembering,
you wanna make sure all of these individual problems
are broken down and rated separately,
because that will give you a much higher rating.
You don't wanna take just a 30% rating
for Parkinson's when you have all of these other problems.
And that goes with diabetes, think about diabetes
you may get 40% if you're on insulin
and you have to regulate your activities,
but you can get so much more from the
peripheral neuropathy that may be in your hands,
your legs, your feet, you need to make sure
all of these things have been evaluated.
- Well thank you so much for that question,
we ask you to send us more, this is Mathew Hill
with Carole Ponton on our Hill and Ponton
Veterans' Video Blog, thanks so much.
(soft new age music)