Why Would A Veteran's Disability Claim Be Denied?
Posted on: 1 March 2017
After suffering from an injury, mental unrest, illness, or exposure to some hazardous substance, veterans are entitled to medical assistance and possible monetary compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Unfortunately, the medical support may not be as comprehensive as you'd like, and the money could be denied if your claim doesn't fit the Veterans Affairs (VA) disability system's requirements. If you're dealing with denials, long wait times, or constant requests for more information without getting something for your trouble, here's some info about the system and ways an attorney could help.
Strict Proof Means Easy Denials
The VA needs to keep disability compensation available for legitimately suffering veterans, and your legitimate claim could be caught in the fraud-busting crossfire. Instead of bringing fraud investigations in on every objectively suspicious claim, every claim is subject to some strict guidelines that attempt to prove your claimed conditions.
Your claim needs to pass two tests: the severity test and the service-connected test. Like any compensation system, you need to prove that your condition isn't fake and that it's severe enough for compensation. Severity comes into play in different ways even if your claim is approved, as different severity levels will get different pay percentages, which you may want to challenge for increases later.
Service-connection is the barrier that separates VA compensation from most other disability and compensation systems. You need to prove that your condition is related to military service, since conditions that happened after leaving the military don't count for VA compensation, while conditions that existed before your military service only count if your condition was made worse by military service--or if you got lucky and the system thinks that it's a new condition, but that's a rare and not entirely legal situation.
For many veterans, service-connection covers a lot of situations, but is hard to prove. VA disability isn't just for combat veterans or veterans who were injured as part of some terrible workplace accident. Whether you were on leave, out in town, on patrol, or on your free time between duty shifts, as long as you were active duty or active reserve, it counts.
Just file a claim and let the VA tell you no if you're not sure, and get an attorney to help you turn that answer into a yes.
An Attorney Can Clarify Your Situation
You need to have proof that your condition is service-connected, and that means having documentation.
The most successful claims will have official military medical records that detail how your condition happened and show when it happened. The next best record will be a civilian medical record that shows the same information, in the odd case that your medical command didn't keep up with paperwork or you left the military from a remote site without a medical command. The VA understands that paperwork mistakes happen, and substitutions can be made.
The most flimsy evidence you can have from the military is just reporting that you have a problem, but getting no treatment or agreement from medical professionals that it's a problem. It at least shows that you had the problem before leaving the military, and that your condition has military history.
An attorney is necessary if you're missing any of that evidence, or just working with a flimsy report of your condition. You'll need medical professionals outside of the VA to determine the severity of the condition and the attorney to link your condition to past events through record research in other VA cases. Contact an attorney to begin working on a more successful claim.
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