A Combined Ratings Formula You Can Use

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.

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Vietnam Veteran Death Rate

Vietnam Vet Death Rate

 It is apparently based on an estimate that 800,000 Vietnam-era veterans had died by 2000. That number was reasonable: About 9.2 million Americans served in the military during the Vietnam era (1964-75), so that would mean about 8 percent of them had died and 92 percent were still alive.

  The problem arose when someone applied the 800,000 figure to a different denominator: 2.7 million, the estimated number of veterans who actually served in Vietnam, rather than at home or in some other theater. This made it appear that nearly one-third of those veterans were dead in 2000 and that they were dying at a rate of almost 400 a day. That would have meant more than 100,000 deaths a year, or nearly two million between 2000 and 2015: a path to near-total disappearance. 

  

  In reality, the death rate for Vietnam-era veterans in recent years has been comparable to or lower than that of other men in their generation, according to the CDC. 

  Of the men with the age distribution of Vietnam-era veterans who were alive in 2000, about 12 percent had died by 2010, with about 1.5 percent of the survivors projected to die each year since then. 

  (I don’t know if I believe these figures because there is a lot of room for mistakes and unknowns. Plus, it doesn’t show the percentage of actual in-country veterans still alive.)

  

  There is no real way to know how many of us are left. Phony in-country Nam vets are everywhere. The DOD probably has an accurate count of who actually served in Vietnam, but I don’t know if they have an accurate count of how many of us have died.

  I try not to worry about it anymore. I thank God every morning I wake up still breathing and ask him to give me twenty more years because I’m not finished with all the things I want to do in this life. That may sound silly to some people, but I believe attitude has a lot to so with long term survival. 

  When I think back on how PTSD had control of me ever since Nam, and how much I have fought it off and made strides to correct the symptoms inside me,  I realize there is hope for us. We can adjust and live with it and become better people  at peace with ourselves in our twilight years.

Unemployability: When Will They Make Me Permanent and Total?

BLT 1/3 on the USS Okinawa late 1967. I still had an M-14. They would make me
trade it for a 16 a few weeks after this photo. Vietnam was like being dropped on
another planet for most Americans, in a culture that was so alien to us that we
were truly strangers in a strange land. Long term effects like PTSD were sure to happen.

Unemployability: When Will They Make Me Permanent and Total?

When you  receive an  unemployability rating, you are getting the same benefit as a veteran  with 100% rating. The difference is one is schedular (100%) and the other is non-schedular (below 100%  but considered totally disabled). For PTSD, once you reach 70%, the VA automatically considers you for  unemployability. You will remain at 70%, yet, you will be 100%, which can be confusing. So why do some veterans get rated Permanent and Total and others do not?

  1. The amount  of  time you have been in the system.

If you have maintained employment most of your life and received unemployability in the last few years, the VA may not make you Permanent and Total right away. There may be a chance you can recover and go back to  work. Of course, for PTSD this is unlikely, but the amount of time you have been in the system can matter.

 2. Your age.
Once you reach age 50, you are kind of over the threshold with the VA. If you are on unemployabilty for PTSD, the VA knows you are not likely to maintain  employment ever  again. Employers aren’t likely to seek you out and tend to prefer younger people. Most Nam vets now fit this category.

3. Your Case History.
This goes back to point #1 and the amount of time you have been in the system. If you have a long history of PTSD and are over age 50, they are more likely to consider you for Permanent and Total (P&T).

Advantages of Permanent and Total

If you are single, there are no advantages other than a commissary card, and the VA won’t call you in for Comp Exams. I believe that you can once again take military flights, but you should check first. You don’t have school age children or a wife so ChampVA insurance and school benefits aren’t available.

If you are married with school age children, you get the commissary card, ChampVA Insurance for you family, education benefits, and no Comp Exams.

For veterans with families who have been declared unemployable, but have not been declared Permanent, it would be worth it to push your service organization to help you get permanent status. However, after five years you will probably reach Permanent and Total automatically.

If you are single or married and have been declared unemployable but not Permanent, but you don’t have school age children and you don’t need the ChampVA insurance, have your service organization check to see if the VA has you in the system for any future Comp Exams.

If you are not listed for a future Comp Exam, let it alone. Don’t push for Permanent and Total because the VA will not bother you again until you bother them. Then, say after five years, maybe pursue the Permanent rating if you think you need to. But don’t make waves unless you have to. You will be upgraded to Permanent and Total eventually.

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If and when you are called in for a Comp Exam while on unemployability for PTSD, remember the VA cannot take your percentage away just because they feel like it. They would have to show you have improved and can maintain employment. They will check Social Security records to see if you have had any taxes taken out from employment while unemployable.

After five years, the VA must review the entire claim history before deciding to cut your rating. With PTSD, a cut is unlikely because of the age factor and because PTSD just doesn’t go away. Probably the most important factors in the Permanent and Total rating are age, how long you worked, how long you have been in the system, and the 70% rating.

There is legislation, or changes have been suggested by a group of analysts, to stop Unemployability after age 65 because a veteran could have already retired if working. I don't know if anything will come of it, and it will not change the status of veterans already on UE. This is still in the discussion phase on the way the VA budget can be cut. Hopefully, nothing will happen.

Dennis Latham Books