How VA Benefits Work—from a Veteran Law Attorney ⚖️
Source- Derek Debus, Stone Rose Law
Originally posted on social media, this article has become very popular in explaining how VA benefits work to those who may be unfamiliar.
Let’s talk about VA benefits. In this 🧵we will cover:
✅Purpose of VA benefits
✅How service connection and ratings work
✅How VA “math” works
✅Why VA compensation is different from civilian disability and why limiting it to only “combat” veterans is wrong
✅Why VA compensation looks “fraudulent” to the uniformed
✅The problem with claims sharks.
Buckle in, it’s gonna be a long one.
In fact, I even logged into here on my computer so I could save my thumbs from all the typing.
For context, I am a Marine infantry veteran and one of the country’s most respected veterans law attorneys. I am routinely speaking to State and Federal legislators about these issues and I have represented tens of thousands of veterans.
Before jumping in, though, I want to note that my job is NOT to get all of my clients to 100% disability. It’s simply not the case. Ask any one of my clients and they’ll tell you that I’m very clear:
My job is to get my clients the benefits they’re entitled to receive -- no more, no less. In fact, I will usually decline to represent someone who calls my firm and says “I just want to get to 100%”.
As a taxpayer, as a veteran, and as a lawyer, I don’t like fraud in these programs any more than anyone else.
Luckily, we have a full time federal criminal law enforcement agency who solely investigates fraud. And they find less than 1% in the compensation program.
Lastly, I’m going to explain the system and how it works and what its goals are. I’m not going to be sharing my personal view on the system, its faults, or potential fixes. I can do that in another thread if there’s an appetite for it but this is just going to be what the law IS, whether or not I agree with it.
✅The PURPOSE of VA benefits:
VA “disability” benefits are intended to compensate a Veteran for the average loss of earnings potential caused by a service-connected disability.
It does NOT take into account the ACTUAL lost earnings potential a Veteran incurs (except in cases of TDIU).
Put another way, a neurosurgeon making $500k a year with tinnitus will get paid the same as the homeless veteran with tinnitus (about $180/month).
✅How Service Connection works:
In order to get service connected, a veteran must show
1) evidence of an “in-service event”
2) a current, chronic disability
3) a medical nexus between the in-service event and the current disability.
Evidence means...evidence. Without actual, documentary evidence of an injury in service it is really difficult to get service connection.
After a Veteran makes a claim, VA will usually schedule the Veteran for examinations and medical opinions from VA’s own trained medical experts.
So already, there is a fair amount of barriers to VA benefits -- more so than I bet the peanut gallery yelling ‘fraud’ thought.
But it’s also interesting that VA compensation is a bit like Schrödinger’s cat: depending on where you are on the internet, it’s either impossible to get a claim approved or all it takes is sad eyes and a pretty please.
✅How ratings “work”.
Remember, VA compensation is intended to compensate the veteran for the AVERAGE lost earnings potential due to their disabilities.
How does VA decide this?
Well, the Secretary publishes a “Schedule of Rating Disabilities.” Almost every disability has a 4 digit “diagnostic code”. That diagnostic code, in turn, tells you how symptoms of that disability are rated.
Here is the diagnostic code for allergic rhinitis:
As you can see, if your allergic rhinitis is service connected (likely because of burn pits), you will get a 30% if you have polyps in your nasal passage. You will get a 10% if you don’t have polyps but you have sufficient blockage in one or both nostrils.
✅How VA “math” works:
I will concede it seems incongruent seeing an ostensibly able bodied individual have a 50-60-70% or higher rating from the VA. But you have to understand that those ratings are based on how the VA combines disabilities.
An example will help:
Let’s say a veteran has service connected PTSD from Iraq at 50%. Let’s also assume that the Veteran has lumbar arthritis rated at 20%.
Well, that Veteran is not rated at 70%. He is rated at 60%. Why?
Coupon math.
Assume we have a 50% off coupon and a 20% off coupon. We can’t stack those coupons to make 70% because *reasons* but the store will let us use them subsequently.
So the first coupon takes the $100 price tag down to $50. The next coupon subtracts 20% off the new price of $50 (which is $10 -- thanks Math for Marines!)
We add up the 50 and the 10 and we get to 60%. It’s math, but it’s not math that we generally do on a daily basis so it feels strange.
Put another way, VA assumes we start at 100% able bodied, lines up the rated disabilities in order of severity, and then deducts the % of disability form the % of able bodied function remaining.
Furthermore, the ratings schedule was basically created in 1945, with minor revisions throughout the years. But it compensates things like joint pain, headaches, mental health, etc.
It feels a bit out of touch with modern labor to many people because the way we work in 2026 is much different than how we did in 1945.
✅Why VA compensation looks “fraudulent” to the uninformed:
Setting aside whether one agrees with this system or not, there is very little fraud. What most people are calling “fraud” is either their own ignorance or their disagreement with the way the system is set up. But throwing around the F word is a big deal.
But why do so many uninformed folks think there’s fraud?
Simply put, it’s in the name: “disability”. When people hear disability, they expect to “see” a disability. This is true in all disability contexts -- people harass individuals with service dogs or disabled folks who park in handicap spots despite not using a wheelchair.
but it misunderstands a few things:
First, disabilities can be visible or invisible, or they can be readily observable in a 2 second interaction or require detailed and prolonged contact to notice.
Second, VA “disability” compensation isn’t really “disability” in the sense we usually consider the term.
See, Social Security Disability -- the most well-known disability program -- is tied to working. If you can work, you don’t qualify for SSDI (generally, don’t quote me, I’m not an SSDI lawyer).
VA compensation is not.
So when folks remember their mom not being able to work because she was on SSDI, but sees a 20 something year old vet working part time while having a rating, they don’t understand and they assume fraud.
Truthfully, VA “disability” comp is more like delayed medical malpractice combined with delayed worker’s compensation and liability.
Military members cannot sue doctors for malpractice.
Military branches don’t comply with OSHA.
The Military routinely orders its members to do dangerous, dumb, or harmful things -- in training and while deployed -- that no other employer would or could do.
For example, no employer could or would order an employee to do neck bridges for 4 hours straight until their C7 disc began to bulge and push on their spinal cord.
And if they did, they would be sued (and the victim would make so much more than they do through VA disability comp).
An employer that made their employees swim in toxic soup, clean up asbestos ridden barracks without respirators, or hike for 20 kilometers with an 80lb pack at a 4mph pace every few months would be sued into bankruptcy.
But the military doesn’t have that option. They are told what to do and they must do it.
Your Sergeant is making you do dumb, dangerous, unhealthy physical training? Too bad, suck it up.
Your CO is ordering you to clean up sewage without PPE? Suck it up and do it.
Your chain of command berates and belittles and hazes you until you try to kill yourself? In the civilian world that’s a huge lawsuit. In the military that’s a Wednesday afternoon.
So those are reasons why VA disability looks fraudulent. In the civilian world, no employer who breaks their employees at this rate would survive the litigation that would ensue.
But we look at civilian laborers and wonder why they don’t have the same rates of injury or disability as military members and it’s pretty obvious
If you work construction, you’re working a set shift, with proper protective equipment, at a job site that complies with OSHA. You get sick time, paid time off, and the ability to see whatever doctors you like to treat your aches and pains.
The military isn’t like that. You’re working as much as you’re ordered to work. PT from 0600-0800, then hard labor until 1900? No sick time, the only “doctors” you get to see are...well...they’re military doctors for a reason. And that’s even IF you get time off from your command to actually go see a freaking doctor.
So, we have the type of work that is prone to causing repetitive use/wear and tear injuries, no time to recover, and no substantive access to medical providers to keep nagging minor injuries from getting worse.
And worse, a servicemember harmed by the negligence or ignorance of their employer has no recourse (until they get out and can seek compensation).
✅Why limiting disability to “combat” vets is wrong.
Well, for many of the reasons we just discussed, it’s wrong. Training is dangerous and deadly (and unavoidable). Even the mandatory PT often leads to injuries and disabilities. People get hurt in training ALL THE TIME.
If we require only combat vets get disability, then the servicemember who was raped by their superior gets nothing. The Veteran who was shot on the rifle range gets nothing. The Veteran whose parachute failed to fully open, causing him to break both legs on landing gets nothing.
That makes no sense.
✅The problem with “claims sharks.”
While VA benefits fraud is sub 1%, it does happen. Every system has fraud -- every. single. one.
But much of the fraud in the VA compensation space is perpetuated by unaccredited third party “consulting” companies who are incentivized to get a veteran the highest rating possible. These companies prey on veterans, who simply want help accessing a complicated system with many pitfalls.
And instead, these companies defraud the Veteran, the VA, and the taxpayer. What’s worse -- VA isn’t doing anything about them!
Last year, the VA paid accredited attorneys about $380m in attorney’s fees for our work helping veterans get the benefits they earned.
ONE of these claims shark companies last year earned about $400m itself. Doing work that’s entirely illegal and yet the VA and federal government turns a blind eye to it.
These companies have no ethical, moral, or fiduciary obligation to their clients. They have no oversight or supervision or accountability to anyone but their own bottom line.
And their whole shtick is to have their own rubber stamp MDs sign off on whatever will increase the Veteran’s rating so the company makes more money.
That’s wrong and its harmful to Veterans and taxpayers to boot.
So, if you are really, really hot-to-trot on what you believe is “VA disability fraud”, you should urge your congressional critters to pass the GUARD VA Benefits Act to put these claims sharks out of business.
So; TL;DR
VA compensates veterans for what they think the average earnings impact of a disability will be, regardless of what the actual impact is on that veteran’s earnings potential.
Vets go through a lot, even during CONUS peacetime service, that civilian employers cannot do to their employees.
Vets get hurt at higher rates than civilians in comparable jobs because of the work tempo, lack of ability to get treatment, and inability to sue for negligence or dangerous conditions>
We shouldn’t arbitrarily require that a vet serve in “combat” to qualify for disability benefits.
And to the extent there is some fraud in the VA disability system, that fraud is perpetuated by illegal companies that manufacture fake evidence and tell their customers to refuse VA examinations.