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| BLT 1/3 Vietnam 1967 |
PTSD Claims & Combined Ratings
When you file a claim for PTSD, you believe combat stressors
have altered your life. Combat stressors are the key to the original rating.
The VA admits you experienced events that changed your life forever. When you
apply for an percentage increase, the increase is not based on additional
stressors. You don't need additional stressors when you apply for an increase.
Some veterans
believe the more stressors they submit during the course of the claim, the
higher their percentage. After the initial service connection, your percentage
is based on your ability to function and support yourself in the work force.
Most combat veterans mistrust authority, which can make life difficult when you
job search or try to hold a job. Many veterans who had a position of authority
in the service suffer from extreme survivor guilt over troops they lost. They
often do not want to be put in a position of responsibility for others again.
When you add drinking, drug addiction, paranoia, startle response, lack of
sleep, and inability to feel emotions, it results in a bad case of PTSD.
Some veterans can
mask it for awhile, but others fall apart sooner. A severe employment handicap
covers any increase beyond initial service connection. So if you put in for a
increase, you must stress the problems you have at work if you are working or
with a past employer if you no longer work. Don't bring up additional stressors
unless they directly relate to your job. Many PTSD combat veterans prefer to
work isolated so they don't have to deal with other people. This can result in
job problems or self-employment, sometimes in a family business. The VA cannot
penalize veterans for being self-employed
Combined Ratings
When a veteran has more than one disability the VA combines
them, based on the principle that a veteran can never receive more than 100%
disability. I’ve met veterans with up to five distinct 100% disabilities, but
there is no way to go past 100% for compensation without receiving an
additional letter award for loss of use or missing limbs.
The VA and service
organizations use a rather complicated numerical formula involving fractions to
combine percentages, but there is a simple way to do it that will be accurate
99% of the time, if not all the time. I call it the Disabled-Wellness Formula.
I will use a veteran
with three disabilities received in this order: 30% for back injury, 10% for hearing loss, and then 30% for PTSD.
Added up they
total 70%, but they will actually
combine out to 60%. The veteran will lose 10% in the process. This is how it
works:
The 30%
back injury service connection makes the veteran 30% disabled but leaves the
veteran 70% wellness (functional).
When the veteran
receives an additional 10% for hearing loss, you multiply 70 x 10 (you multiply
the new percentage by the amount of wellness and drop the zeroes on the end.)
This leaves a total
of 7. Any result below 5 means no increase. A result of 5 or above means going
to the next higher percentage.
In this case, a 7
means going up to a 10% disability. The veteran loses nothing and will now have
a 30% back injury rating plus a 10% hearing loss rating for a total of 40%.
The veteran has a
40% disabled and 60% wellness. But the veteran now receives a PTSD service
connection rated at 30%. When you add them all together, it equals 70%, but due
to the combined formula, it doesn’t turn out that way.
You multiply
the new 30% by the wellness 60% and drop
the zeroes for a total of 18.
Since the 8 is above
a 5, you go up to the next higher percentage. In this case, the 18 goes up to a
20. The veteran receives and additional 20% disability rating, even though he
was granted 30%.
The veteran now
combines out at 60% even though he is
70% disabled and only 30% well.
We can take it even
further. Say the veteran gets another 50% for a brain tumor. Multiply the 60% by
the 30% wellness and drop the zeroes. In this case, it’s a total of 18.
Since it’s 5 or
above, the 18 goes up to 20%. The veteran would get a combined rating of 80%,
even though he is now 120% disabled.
This combined 80%
rating would leave the veteran a 20% wellness, meaning he would have to obtain
another 50% disability to get another 10% on the combined percentage.
To obtain enough
percentage to actually reach 100% combined, the veteran would need two more 50%
disabilities, leaving him actually 220% disabled to receive 100%.
This probably
wouldn’t be necessary by then because the veteran would probably be rated
unemployable and get the 100% for unemployability.
I imagine there are
one or two instances where this formula could be wrong, but for most
circumstances, it will work when a veterans want to figure their own combined
rating.
