State of Thursday: 100% DISABLED VETERAN BULLSH*TTERS
Fraudsters are going to ruin it for everyone.
Greetings, Dear Reader,
You know what it is. Let’s get after it.
100% DISABLED VETERAN BULLSHITTERS
A few things are true: VA disability is rife with bullshitters. There’s almost nothing that can be done about it. Not necessarily for the reason you think either. At the same time, reform for the process is absolutely necessary or the DoD will bankrupt itself.
Sorry to say, but the door needs to be shut on future claims.
—
It took me 10 years to file with the VA.
They tell you, or at least they did when I was in, to file immediately, as soon as you know you’re ending active service (so, like 3-9 months out). Looking back, the reason why was obvious: The VA is a bureaucratic mess. Better to get it done on the government dime than to wait until it’s your time that’s getting wasted.
At the time, welfare avoidance was reflexive to me. That’s how I viewed it. That’s how I view almost any government benefit. It’s just welfare and I don’t need welfare.
I also didn’t want it on the books that I had things wrong with me. I did and still do. I enlisted and deployed at the height of the insurgency in Iraq. I was not a grunt, don’t get me wrong, but these wheels still have some rough mileage on them.
My view of “VA disability” has since evolved a bit. Firstly: If you were injured during service and will need medical aid in the future, particularly when you are elderly, you owe it to your loved ones to get those things officially recognized with the veteran medical infrastructure.
Secondly: If your injuries, both physical and mental, are permanent and act as obstacles to your professional advancement that others who did not serve, yet nevertheless benefitted from your sacrifice, do not have, then you deserve modest compensatory recompense. Permanently if necessary.
I don’t think that’s even remotely a stretch.
Now, all that said, the VA disability system is rife with abject bullshitters and frauds.
—
VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned in disgrace in 2014. The 2010s were the absolute pinnacle of hate for the agency. Veterans were dying in VA parking lots waiting for proper service. Some were going into a VA office to file appeals, running into brick walls of bureaucracy, walking back outside and shooting themselves.
The whole issue was the endless waiting. Delay of essential medical and, importantly, psychological services was at a peak in 2013. More than 600,000 veterans were on a disability waitlist. They had filed and had not been scheduled for screening in at least >125 days.
The agency was caught completely off guard by the most predictable influx of broken veterans with legitimate claims.
After six years of expansive ground war, claims started to skyrocket right around the 2008-2010 time period.
Since Shinseki’s resignation, those wait times have improved drastically. There are now fewer than 100,000 veterans waiting past the 125 window for disability screening. It’s been an absolute sea change, but to what effect?
—
In 2019, we had finally gotten to the point where we could buy a home, but we needed a VA loan to do it.
My wife’s ~$75,000 in college debt had been paid off. We’d both been promoted professionally and had made significant salary steps. It was time.
There was just one problem: The VA loans had a “funding fee.”
It wasn’t much, I think maybe 2%. But two points on hundreds of thousands of dollars adds up. It would be a five figure cost. The only way to avoid it: If you have even 1% disability rating, the fee is waived.
My wife was clear: Get that can of yours down to the VA.
So I did. First I asked some friends who had filed recently what the process was like. Gist was it was worse than the DMV, buuuuuut … they’d fast track everything.
“If you went to Iraq or deployed at all, they just rubber stamp it,” a close friend told me. “70%.”
70?! Lol, okay.
Navigating the process took me about a month. I still had all my old documentation. I had persistent tendon issues in my elbows, issues in my shoulders, both knees, recurring stress fractures in my feet. Also some back stuff. I’d even had at least one corrective surgery so I could deploy. I blew some guts through my abdominal wall doing one thing or another. Rounding it out, I had the hearing of a man at least 20 years older than me, particularly hearing the human voice in a busy room. Unless someone screamed in my face, I plum could not make out words.
It also took me a long time to admit I had some level of post traumatic stress. It wasn’t the fighting. I hadn’t seen nearly as much as some of my friends. Also what fighting I did see I enjoyed, but that’s another issue entirely.
I did frequently dream of the dead, though, afterward for a long time. I was also anxious almost all the time. I semi-frequently imagined myself dying in various ways. I’d lose track of time and then realize I’d zoned out and been thinking of ways I could die in a given day. These usually occurred most often during high stress periods of my life. I didn’t think this was abnormal, but they still considered it “suicidal ideation.”
None of this, from the bones and muscles to the brain to the mentality, seemed all that crazy to me.
So I gathered all my documents from every time I went to military medical and hauled them to every appointment the VA set for me. I went to the ear doctor. I did shoulder and knee stuff. The whole gamut. It took weeks and dozens of hours.
Last stop was psyche screening. I was fine, basically, I said, except I hated crowded, loud rooms and would often become socially paralytic. Early on, when I first got out, if I was drinking in this kind of situation, I’d often suddenly get violent. Pick a mark, a face I didn’t like, and bust him in the mouth.
Did it have an effect on me professionally? Folks, I work in communications. Of course it did.
Also, I’d zone out here and there and picture myself dying. Big woop, amirite! Wrong. The psyche was disturbed. She told me to get on SSRIs (LOL, nah) and go to group therapy (sorry, I’d rather cut down trees with the boys).
Weeks went by and I got my screening back. Every claim, down the whole list, denied denied denied denied. Paperwork. Demonstrated issues. Denied.
Then PTSD: 70.
—
I could tell you I still had no idea it paid, but you probably wouldn’t believe me. Regardless, it’s true. I had no idea disability generated automatic checks from the DoD — I just thought it would be socialized medicine and, most importantly for me, a waived VA Loan “funding fee.”
But checks showed up one day and I was shocked. This can’t be correct.
My wife, who is just as much a Republican as I am, considered it workers’ comp. It was compensation, a pension, for a sacrifice I made that others hadn’t and had nonetheless benefitted from.
Perhaps that’s true. At least, there are folks I served with who are indelibly f*cked up and they deserve compensation. Yes, forever, until death.
The problem is the way the VA went from 600,000 to 100,000 on the waitlist. The rubber stamp worked for guys who’d done two, three, four, sometimes as high as 10 deployments.
That’s not what we’re seeing today, though.
—
The issue has become more pronounced in recent years because of center-right personal finance podcaster Caleb Hammer.
He has dozens, probably hundreds of clips at this point.
He once talked to two veterans, one who apparently never left the states, and one who flew into an Arab base, worked, and flew out. They were both reportedly at 100% and receiving around $10,000 a month. He had one guy who was a cook receiving $4,000 a month for hearing loss. The guy wanted $8,000 and was working toward that goal, Hammer later said. Another guy studied cyber security as a civilian and seems to have spent most of his time on base. He said he had disability to the tune of $4k a month.
That’s all … eye popping. I deployed three times and spent significant time outside the wire. I’m not even close to that. I’m sure I have friends who did 4x what I did who are not even close to that.
Along with Hammer, you now have rape-tastic Graham Platner. He has a 100% rating. He was infantry. He might deserve it, who knows, I haven’t really looked into his case (not sure I legally even can, given privacy laws).
Not exactly the poster child you want for VA disability.
—
The general consensus is VA disability will not get cut because it’s a third rail. Nobody wants to cut benefits for veterans.
That’s an issue, but it’s not the real issue.
The real issue is that unfucking the ratings of 19 million veterans is a massive clusterfuck. It’s an administrative and bureaucratic nightmare. I’m not a mathematician or a risk analyst, but you don’t need to be one to know that over/under on the cost of doing that versus just paying out the benefits is an easy hedge to make.
You just pay out what you’ve already promised and avoid the cost of rerating everyone plus dealing with the wave of legal challenges.
But you don’t move on that easily.
The rubberstamp that worked for actually damaged veterans caught in the forever waiting loop is now getting abused. There are dozens of companies out there offering services to veterans and guaranteeing 100% rating. The yearly cost is over $200 billion and skyrocketing. That’s insane. It’s unsustainable.
As usual, a system devised for people who genuinely deserve help is getting abused by a vast swath of liars, cheats and fraudsters.
The VA needs to close the door. Now. It’s shameful. We need to return to doing it the hard way and actually rating veterans fairly and comprehensively.
Otherwise, the whole system will implode. It’ll take some of my closest friends with it.
MORE LINKS
Trans Arizona Democrat Arrested For Breaking Into Home, Threatening Individual With Knife
SMH
—
Societal breakdown right before your eyes.
—
Republicans Hope Trump’s Unprecedented Convention Can Rewrite Midterm History
A midterm gambit.
Like what you’re reading? If so, please consider subscribing to State of the Day or sharing this with a friend. You’d be supporting this newsletter and helping keep independent journalism alive.
If you are already a paid subscriber, make sure to join the conversation in our subscribers-only chat below.
Like you, I was very hesitant to apply for disability. I was told a ton of reasons that I should, but it just didn't feel right. Why I finally did - some one told me "do you think your claim is going to have the slightest affect on what the government wastes our money on? Claim some of it back and use it where you think it will go to best use, because you are a better judge of the use of your money than the government will ever be." A big thank you to all the US taxpayers out there, I try to do the best I can with what you give, and have given, to me.