My intent in posting the messsage I did was to assist those who do not know about the claims process. I also hoped to give some insight into my "world as a VA rater." And, despite the flaming I got, I am still willing to answer general questions for those of you who have a need. Although you appear disdainful of the information I shared and obviously do not require it, some may and it is to those that I direct any insight I can share.

I will not answer to the derisive comments made and inferred regarding my professional integrity. I will state that many of us at the VA are veterans from all services and have family members who are also veterans or active duty as well [do ya think we might tend to care about veterans?]. There is a vast range of military experience at my office and we regularly consult one another for expertise regarding specifics on MOS, hazards, etc. Also, at my office new employees undergo 6-9 months of very intensive classroom training and are then paired with a mentor for at least a year. VA laws and regs ARE very complex. That said, I see a some choices for you here: 1) We veteran and non-veteran VA employees all sleep with/are the enemy and have a grand time denying claims and tossing cases into the trash 2) Most of us do care that deserving vets get their benefits and do our best to see that they do 3) All VA employees, veteran or otherwise are incompetent idiots just out to collect a pay check.

Next, VA is far from perfect. Can you name any large organization or for that matter any organization that is? If so, let me know so I can go work there. We do need more help and my office is hiring and training a fast as possible to meet the ever increasing need.

On to POAs. You obviously have had poor experiences with them as well with the VA. I'm defending the ones I work with. Most of ours are veterans themselves. Each service organization has an office in my buidling. They are free to talk with us about cases as we are free to talk with them. We regularly work together to get veterans the benefits they are due. Sorry yours are so shabby.

Finally, one of you stated that it is not the veteran who is the problem. Over all that's true. Many just need information to help them navigate the system. However, there is money involved here. You surely don't believe that there are not unscrupulous individuals out there who want a piece of the pie and will go to amazing lengths to get it. Back when I was with a very large law firm as a Medical-Legal Analyst aka Nurse Paralegal, I called some of the lawsuits filed "Litigation Lotto." You can bet I see plenty of the same at the VA. They cheat deserving vets and contribute mightily to the clogging of the system. I do my best to see that they don't get what they don't deserve. I work just as hard to see that veterans do get the benefits that they are entitled to.

Sounds like your panties are in a bunch. The tone of your response which was a personal attack on myself was not relevant to the problems the veterans who express their problems with the VA claims have. I have experience from all across the nation, from all ethnic groups and both sexes and all branches of the military. It is the same everywhere. Although, Since I have been making noice in Washington and other veterans are being directed in the proper manner to handle their problems, I do have to admit I have seen some attempt in improvement. I tell those who complain to me, it is not the VA in itself, it is the particular employee you dealt with. By the tone and response you gave, I think you ought to stick to nursing and not claims.

I would like to reenter this debate for just a minute.

Here is a news flash: hospitalized inpatients,
and the majority of hospitalized outpatients
are NOT the right victims for lifelong claims litigation from their bedsides.

I would love to get on with my life, but the 300 square feet of VA and Social Security files that is taking over my house won't let me.

By mere reason of this Claims
litigation "perpetration" of major,
court-level litigation upon people who
cannot even get pro bono licensed attorneys
is a page out of Hitler's Germany. Get real
about how all of you look like to us.

Now for you to come flying in with a nursing
background to boot, and to somehow suggest that
this is in any way a "caring" environment that all of you work in at the VA, is a story taller than the World Trade Center.

None of you in Claims "get it", that there is
such a thing as Murder-By-Buracracy, and I
am predicting that this will certainly be my
own fate for sure.

You in claims are literally killing us with your papers. We know this at Vets For Justice because we go into the CVA dockets and read what the family members say of dead family
veterans. Maybe this would be a good teaching
exercise for your VA office to embark upon
and walk down the same road of research that
us writers do.

So, you need a reality check here that the
Claims process in it's entirety at the VA is
cruel, inhumane, no other patient population in the U.S. has to go through it from a sick bed,
and there is no "honor" to be found in you
trying to defend it. It is a carefully schemed, perpetrative, hate-crime at best. Only psychos,
sickos, perverts, and Boston Strangler types
would come up with such a weird, lifelong,
burdensome, cruel-and-unusual burden on
an entire country full of sick and injured
national security workers (veterans).

Your Office of General Counsel uses criminal
prosecution law tactics against us, as if
they are District Attorney Prosecutors and as
if we are the latest Collar from NYPD.

We are just patients trying to get our incomes fixed.

The techniques used by the OGC and the
Monkey-Squad that represents the VACO Secretary
are criminal, illegal, unconstitutional,
and murderous, and as a crime victim on the
receiving end of this Death-Mill that you are
all running, I stand by this position.

You've all got more excuses than Bayer has aspirin as to why none of us can have our benefits money. There are no rules of evidence, and no rules of pleading, yet I have a lifetime
of denials for not complying with either.
Give me a break I say !

Nothing would make me happier than a
court ruling declaring all of your
Claims jobs as illegal and unconstitutional
and if you all went home tomorrow, then
it would be a step up in my quality of
life, I am sure. Perhaps I could get
back to being a patient again.

One More Thing to RATER

If you get a minute, please scroll downward
on the Index page to HOMELESS TOPICS and
see my Blog titled "End Legal Project".
Keep in mind that this is not a category
for homeless people, but just a place to
stash undefined categories. This particular
Blog will enlighten you about the human
torture that lurks behind this VA Claims
system when you try to do it on somebody
coming out of 2 months in Critical Care
as I did. This will perhaps, be the reality
check that you can take back to your office.
Thanks.

One thing is sure, the 5th Amendment calls for due process and compensation, but we as veterans are not recieving due process. We can not have lawyers help us,"help !" with the initial claim, we have to depend on Service Reps. The governement considers the compensation that vets recieve as welfare. FDR and his court confirmed this in 1934. The 5th amendment points out that Congress gives and Congress takes, and Congress can appoint just about anyone to do it's work. Please read and study the 5th Amendment of the Constitution. The VA is aiding the Government through our own ignorance. Why do you think that CAVC for VA was formed, the real courts were about to hear veterans claims, read, push, read, and read some more.

To Rater; My separation physical of April 1960, stated, becomes dizzy after over exertion, pain in chest, pounding heart and leg cramps after exerise, temporary paralysis of right arm and right while in Morocco, cause unknown, has had extensive neurological and psychiatria workup with no diagnosis. considered undiagnnosable and perodic followups advised.
VA Doctor diagnosed partial collapse left carotid artery, I was rated 30%. I had hypertension, hypokalemia,cardiac arrhythmias, hyperaldosteronism,Cushings/Conn's syndrome which would be proven in the nineties by VA and Private Doctors. I would have an additional seven strokes,seven heart attacks, 5 stent placed in my heart with five additional blocks in the heart. Kidney arteries are blocked 90%.Most of my arteries are blocked or hardened.I have diabetes. I have had the left adrenal gland removed while the right adrenal gland has a tumor producing hyperaldosteronism. The VA states that t he hyperaldosteronism has to be malignant, well guess what hyperaldosteronism is always malignant "active" It has all but destroyed my body, the VA Doctors have proven this,thru treatment records and have tied it to a stroke that I had in Morocco, as well as everything that followed; while the Raters say no way.I am rated 100% for my heart since 1999 when I should have been rated 100% for Cushings in 1960, and then been given additional ratings for my body damage.It has been to BVA CAVC BVA and back to NJRO where the train just keeps puffing. Help you bet!

What really makes me angry is a rater who has the audacity to admit and defend openly the fact that the raters decide which veteran is a fraud, and purposely try to make sure he or she doesn't get anything. What if you are wrong? It costs you NOTHING; but sometimes it costs the veterans everything. They lose their homes, their family, their credit rating, more of their health, and maybe even their life.

Having to "navigate the system," as you put it, smacks of the familiar games veterans are forced to play. Some veterans probably don't play them well, so they are marked as frauds. In some cases, the regs are not all that complex, finding ways to get raters to follow them is. Parsing words in the regulations and statements of medical evidence, as well as assigning probative weight and credibility of evidence at your discretion leaves veterans in little more than a crap shoot.

No matter how many hours a veteran puts into a claim or how credible and weighty his or her evidence is, with a few touches of the keyboard a rater can whisk it away. Whether by ignorance or design, you break the law without consequence, while for the diasabled veteran, the consequence of a denied claim is devastating. You make a mistake, it's no skin off your nose; it's just another claim off your desk. Have to meet those production quotas, you know. But wait! The veteran can always...appeal.

You sit smugly proud of yourself for knocking down a veteran's claim because YOU decided he or she is a fraud. How dare you! Fraudulant claims don't have to be knocked down, eventually they won't hold up anyway. You are doing veterans no favor by deciding on your own which veteran's claim to knock down.

How about doing your duty to assist; spend your time assisting veterans' struggles to substantiate claims! That's your job. That's the whole premise of nonadversarial adjudication, which, by the way, is the sole reason veterans are not allowed attorney representation from the beginning. You are the perfect example of why veterans need one.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Cloe,

The individual veterans here who complain about the answers the "rater" gave really need to leave this planet. The "rater" gave them a gift and all they can do is whine. Please forgive me for not complaining. First, I know the system isn't perfect. Second, the system could be better now, but you forget during the Clinton Administration he downsized the government. When did that, many experienced people took the early retirement. These were the experienced people. I do know that when I (as a VSO) have been to training in Roanoke, each Senior person who was either teaching us a class or giving us a lecture were putting out information that was bogus. They did this because no one ever tested their knowledge, instead they promoted them w/o checking to see if they knew what they were talking about. I'll give an example. When I went to TRIPP training in May of 2006 (in Roanoke Va) the teacher (head of the Pension Section) told everyone that any Merchant Seaman could get Veterans Benefits. When I confronted the lady, she tried to put me down and many of my co-workers agreed with here. I went to my supervisor and got the CFR cite. After that, I never received an appology and they lady never stated she would have to review any of her decisions since they were based upon false information. (Only Sea Going Merchant Seaman and individuals that participated in Operation Block House are entitled to benefits).

If you are a VA rater, then come clean and tell us all about the use of the infamous SPN, or SPD code in your process of deciding a vets claim. Evidence has surfaced from a Vietnam Vet in N. Carolina that VA opened a claim for him ( without his knowledge ) for "character & behavior disorder". There is nothing in vets records about this, however, there is SDN-265, unsuitability, character & behavior disorder. That is proof VA does use the coded number, now tell us what you have been told by superiors about using the code against a veteran. Or, how the coded number is required in computer logic to deny a claim, and data you can give about the SPN,SDN,or SPD code will help restore LIBERTY, DUE PROCESS RIGHTS to many veterans.

Okay if your still out there I have a question. I was diagnosed with glucoma and pigmentery dissperssion syndrome two years before a wreck ever occured. I was having vision loss and black spots. I then had a wreck in 2000 and lost total vision in one eye and the VA is trying to lay it all on the wreck, but my records show I had it pre-existing, and also the reason they wont pay for the wreck is because they claim it was a dui, but that since has been dismissed because no one the hospital, court, or USAF, have any offical bac. Meaning I had no alcohol in my system. So what can I do.... Any help you may give would be greatly appreciated. What little vision I have is slipping away. I left service with 23% I'm down to around 10 now. Im only getting 10 % from the VA, but 100% from social security. I was rated in tampa while on active duty at 100 percent, but since my discharge I was denied, and then on appeal got 10, that was in 01, but have been fighting every since. The people in Montgomery say to drop my appeal, and I would probaly get 100 percent, but they just dont want to pay the back time, I eventually filed for my pension in Aug of 07, but still havent heard anything yet, and this is even working with a Congressman. So any help would be greatly appreciated....

i MAKE NO JUDGMENT ON YOU,HOWEVER MOST PEOPLE WOULD AGREE,THE VA IS,AND HAS BEEN CHEATING VETERANS, OUT OF BENIFITS FOR YEARS. I CAN ONLY STATE WHAT I HAVE GONE THROUGH.I HAVE HADE PAPERS,TAKEN OUT, OF THE BVA, SYSTEM,APPEALS CLOSED.NEVER RECEIVED ANYTHING IN WRITING, TO ANSWERS TO MY QUESTIONS,I EVEN HAD A DEAL MADE ,IF I WANTED IT,ALL I SAY IS TRUE,MY RECORDS ARE VARO QRIGINAL STAMPED, DATED SIGNED,MY ANSWER TO A DEAL IS, WE DO NOT MAKE DEALS,EVERY VETERAN,GETS THE SAME TREATMENT, FOLLOW, THE LAW. MY BATTLE IS WITH THE VARO IN NEWARK,THEY HAVE TRIED EVERY TRICK IN THE BOOK, I POSTED A TOPIC ON REMAND, YES I DO HAVE A REMAND, AT BVA,ALREATY,10 PAGES OF EVIDENCE ARE MISSING, PLEASE GIVE US A BREAK, WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE ,YOU MAY TRY YOUR BEST,HOWEVER THE NEXT IN LINE TO GET THE FILE, WILL HAVE STICKY HANDS