VA Proposes Changes to Disability Ratings

If you have a Department of Veterans Affairs-rated disability, heads up. They’re proposing changes to the schedule for disabilities for auditory, respiratory and mental disorders.

If you receive compensation for one of those service-connected conditions, your rating won’t change. The reason for changing the schedule, they say, is to “incorporate modern medical data and terminology” so veterans can receive more accurate and consistent decisions. Ratings will be based on “the most current medical knowledge” for the condition.

Some of the proposed changes are:

— Looking at tinnitus as a symptom of an underlying disease instead of a stand-alone disability.

— Modernizing the rating criteria for sleep apnea and how it impacts earning capacity.

— Evaluating mental-health conditions in terms of interpersonal relationships, life activities, self-care and cognition. It’s proposed that the criteria include a 10% minimum and won’t require “total occupational and social impairment” to reach 100%.

— No current ratings will change, they say. If they’re finalized, veterans can apply for increased compensation. There won’t be any reduction in compensation unless there’s an improvement in the disability.

If you want to read more, see the Federal Register where the document has to be open for comment for 60 days. Go to federalregister.gov and search for “FR Doc. 2022-02049” for two of the disorders, and “FR Doc. 2022-02051” for the third one. Be sure to look through the public comments. A vast majority have to do with sleep apnea and its daily life impact, including earnings.

What concerns me at first glance is that there’s a lot of removing subparagraphs, combining other disability aspects, renaming headings, adding section notes and reorganizing the various sections. How, one wonders, are the ratings personnel supposed to do a realistic evaluation of impairment? Even ratings clerks who have a lot of experience are going to be starting all over again in learning the system.