Saw this come down the VA Watchdog.org wire from a Military.com article:
Why DoD Likely Will Lose Authority to Rate Disabilities
Congressional action to end the services’ authority to assign disability ratings and put the Department of Veterans Affairs in charge can’t come too soon for retired Army Lt. Col. Michael A. Parker.
Parker, 45, has complained for a couple of years to lawmakers and to the Veterans’ Disability Benefits Commission about lax DoD oversight of the disability rating process and unfair disability decisions across the services.
...
The VDBC uncovered a March 1985 legal opinion from the DoD general counsel that allowed the services, without notifying Congress, to begin to hold down disability ratings. The services were to stop setting disability ratings based on all ailments and injuries found during medical evaluations and to start basing them only conditions that make a member unfit for duty.
The intent, it appears, was to save on retirement and medical costs. If a service discharges a member as unfit with a rating of 20 percent or less, he or she gets only disability severance. A 30 percent or higher rating brings “retiree” status, a lifetime annuity and lifetime military healthcare.
This appears to be a serious problem for thousands of GWOT veterans these days and implementing a working solution for them and future veterans is long overdue.
One thing I noticed was blatantly absent in this article was the massive VA claims backlog already giving headaches and heartache to veterans waiting for benefits. How would this affect the backlog? One can only assume that it will only increase the number of claims in backlog and increase the wait times as well. But to what degree? Given that many of these situations would have resulted in a VA claim anyways, would it be a significant jump? People are already demanding more resources be used to fix the current backlog. One hopes that these recommendations will be followed through with the appropriate resources to deal with the increase and current backlogs as well.
Long Version: here.
