Sassy little header above, isn’t it? Well, Veterans, let’s “unpack ” this as they like to say in the hallowed halls down at the corner of Delay and Deny Ave. NW. I proffer a test case to demonstrate the unworkable tenets associated with the whole concept of streamlining the claims process. Somewhere, there’s a Power Point Presentation of this at VA that makes it sound like greased lightning. The translation into 57 ROs ( 60 now if you throw in the three DROCs) is now complete. I’ll pick a DROC as an example today. This one is From the DC Puzzle Palace. It’s a daisy but a classic example. Thank God I squelched it after only two BVA remands.

Somebody better contact these folks and tell them to lose the word ‘trans’ quick.

Let me see if I can make a long story short. Meet Harry. Standard issue boots on the ground Air Force. One year tour and lots of AO exposure. One look at his code sheet and you’re wondering what’s right with him. Nevertheless, he soldiers on. He hired me during the beginning of the Pandemic to be his swordbearer and take him up the ladder to SMC R1.

Once I accomplished that, he hit me with a second wish. I, of all people, know what it feels like to get dissed. When they said I’d never set foot in Vietnam in ’94 and wasn’t entitled to any Nehmer Class considerations, I damn near choked and puked. It would be fourteen long years before I made them eat those words. It would be another eight (2016) until they paid me everything back to 1994. Revenge still doesn’t sate the appetite without an apology. It lacks that Je ne sais quoi  of earnestness, I guess. A blithe off-the-cuff statement isn’t the equivalent. VA’s final statement on the subject in 2008 was ” Well, we’re willing to concede your presence in the Republic of Vietnam during your tour of duty in Southeast Asia.”

After Harry got over that test, he began to notice early on that he had something that strongly resembled about everything but Parkinson’s. It’s like his civvie doctors had every disease on the tip of their tongues but Parkinson’s. It was variously (rule out) Restless leg syndrome, myoclonus and about 50 other things you never heard of but not the Big P. This began to be a big problem  from 1997 on. It didn’t get better. Fact is, it got way worse and all the doctors sat there (as they usually do) and opined on just what the hell it wasn’t. This is referred to as “practicing medicine” as opposed to performing it.

Harry filed on 9/11/2002 – the very year after the new War started. Harry’s not a doctor. He just pointed to the owie and said “hurts”. VA promptly denied. He went through the motions but even he could understand the juggernaut he was dealing with and threw in the towel. Mr. Parkinson’s continued unabated and began to really get bad.

In 2010, he refiled when they included Parkinson’s into the AO list in §3.309(e). After a year of denials, he bagged it but there would be no talk of going back to 2002. Remember, he didn’t call it Parkie’s. He filed for “hands and feet shaking all the time with being very sad and I have headaches.”

So Harry dumps this in my lap and dredges up all- and boy howdy do I mean all- his med recs and kited them off to me. Well, sure enough there was enough mustard on that hotdog to invoke §3.816(c)(2)(ii) and I did so. VA denied (of course), the HLR booth bitch laughed at me (not with me) and off we went to the BVA. I’d republished duplicates into the VBMS of all the old 2002 Med recs but they wouldn’t even look at them. They weren’t VA authored. They were “tainted” so they never caught any air.

Finally, at the BVA, the Judge agreed and granted the earlier effective date back to ’02. VA, being the most fair and munificent agency in the US Government, on remand allowed as he had a few symptoms which would permit the paltry minimum of 30% under DC 8004-and not a dime more, mind you. Harry was certifiable 90% in 2002. Shoot, I wasn’t having any of that so I began a new AMA “ladder” to the BVA. Harry is mega-AOD material. He’s not over 75 yet but he’s terminally ill from the Interstitial lung disease and his doctors make no bones about how near he is to shaking hands with St. Peter and beginning the “onboarding” process up there.

So Harry and I went back and forth to the BVA a couple of times with this Remand shuck and jive and the Judge finally had a heart to heart discussion on the second remand that it might be necessary to reread them records ol’ Alex dragged out from way back in ’98 that said his hands and feet looked like they had a life of their own. Shake they did. Yessssssss.

They finally conceded as you can read here, that old Harry did deserve that 90% I’d been pitching since late 2020-three years ago. And herein lies the story upon which I began this blog. The new AMA, in spite of being touted as the cat’s pajamas for the 21st century, is quite the opposite. It’s true. When some chowderhead shows up and says “Hi, I’m from the US Gubmint and I’m hear to fix things.”, put your wallet in your front pocket and run. Don’t walk. Sadly the Big Six VSOs were pushing this on Congress as the panacea from Hell. Not.

Redact RD 2002 8.29.23

Redact code sheet 8.29.23

Here’s the problem in a nutshell. VA has inserted so many Indians into the mix, then salted in too many chiefs, and finally created a behemoth that has too many moving parts to be workable. Worse, they illegally delegate authority to the clinicians subcontracted to make nexus decisions and then ask for endless “clarifications” to try to denigrate or dissuade the clinician from confirming a positive correlation between  X (now) and the X you had in service. Sew enough doubt in the clinician’s mind and you eventually get a revised opinion that there is no nexus in spite of what they said last month.

We used to call this develop to deny. It’s still alive and kicking. In this day and age of monetized private nexus letters (IMOs), this is becoming more prevalent -not less. This used to be simple. VA denied. You went out and got a bulletproof IMO and they conceded. Now it’s a contest of wills to be right. We’ve lost sight of the objective-the Veteran.

I know this is true. I’ve been playing VA poker since 1989 and seen everything they have in their VA Cliff Notes™ book. I can even point to the month it began- July of 2020. Up until that time, every VA appeal I won for my Hepatitis C Vets resulted rightfully in a 100% total rating. Most would go on to die shortly thereafter so there wasn’t any question about their  level of illness.

That month, the first rating decision came out on one of my remands back from BVA. No c&p exam ensued. No verification of disease or level of disability a la Fenderson. It came out at 0%. “The BVA told us to give you SC for Hep C. Here you go sucker. You did the cure with Harvoni. Ergo you have no disease. 0%. Thank you for your service. Next?”

Thus began the new AMA hamster wheel. You file your substantial with yet another IMO, they deny. You get a HLR that’s hostile and you auger in again. Off to BVA and they remand back and say something inane like “Duty to assist error” and off to the races we go on a new remand. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. After several trips to the BVA remand laundry, you get a bump up to 20% for the Hep. This is old world VA style water torture from the Legacy days. So where’s the greased lightning? Where’s this high-powered, big improvement that’s going to eradicate the backlog which keeps growing?

We’re rapidly reaching new ways to thwart this new version of VA remand Badminton. You have to nail it down at the BVA and hold their feet to the fire. Develop that thing until there simply isn’t anything left for guesswork and send it up to the BVA on a direct docket. Hearings and evidence submittals only provoke a do over down below now.

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ with it.

P.S. Thanks to Amy Odom and her presentation of Haskell. After this one comes out, I think this Parkinson’s conundrum will resolve itself. But maybe not. It wouldn’t be the first time the Secretary decided to blow off the CAVC. Nor the last.