Combined Ratings Formula
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 original 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.
