Another trip around the Sun and my eighteenth article on the subject of Memorial Day. As the title suggests, I lost another eight clients over the course of 2025. Sadly, one was not currently married (with children) and was a Nehmer-class Vet. As the Agent Orange lawsuit was not a product of the VA, it falls under different rules. If you die of any of the diseases listed in §3.309(e), in the absence of a spouse, your children can be substituted for accrued claims and burial benefits.

Since everybody and their mother is writing about dead Vets this weekend, I’ll go off the reservation and focus on other items that impact us as Veterans. One good thing I hear is the Govt. has decided to increase DIC benefits for surviving spouses. No mention of exactly how much but anything would be welcome and long overdue.

Imagine existing on a 100% rating for about $4 K and $2 K of SSA and suddenly you’re getting $1650 plus only the hubby’s SSA.  I’ve developed a program where I have all the data and forms (22a, 534 and 847) already presigned and here, poised to file a DIC claim the moment a Vet passes away. All I need is the Death Certificate to launch.

I dumpster dive the Vet’s claims file while he’s alive and harvest all the marriage and divorce records off old 686s. The reason is simple. Who in Sam Hill has time to start assembling that data in the middle of funeral arrangements and the endless phone calls to rearrange your life? A widow (or widower) has an impossibly heavy load to carry as it is. I offer this gratis to all my clients. It’s almost impossible to accomplish it after the Vet dies. We have about 3 days to grab it following death before we lose access to the VBMS file. With a brand new 22a in hand, I can file it the moment the file is shut down and prepare for the DIC filing. This is Boy Scouts 101- be prepared.

Other exciting news this week is the recent class action decision in North Carolina against Veterans Guardian VA Claim Consulting LLC. It seems there is still a law on the books saying you can’t do this (VA Claims) unless  you’re accredited by VA.  Just because the Federal Government is remiss in prosecuting these greedy Veterans who are fleecing their fellow Veterans out of tens of millions, that doesn’t mean individual fleeced resident Veterans of North Carolina are not free to fly at it. And Jennifer Ford, Eric Beard and Brian Otters proceeded to fly at them. Read about it here:

Veterans Guardian VA Claim Consulting LLC

Now for bad news. The VA litigation picture for rank and file Vets who file claims right now is bleak. An Agency already renowned for being slower than the Seven-year Itch, has become even slower. Considering they’re claiming to squeeze every Lincoln Penny until Abe hollers ‘Uncle’, VA has now embarked on an unsustainable path to do endless c&p exams and turn the 125-day Standard claim model into a two-year project- and then only complete a small part of it. They’ll defer the rest and schedule the c&p for the mental 4 months out. Three years later following the original 526 or 995, when (and if) they finally do grant, the effective date has morphed into the day last week when the c&p shrink did your psyche review- not November 10, 2023, when you filed the claim for increase. Welcome back to the Hamster wheel.

With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), one would think VA could take your claim and insert it into their magic computers with virtually instant results showing a grant or denial. One would obviously think wrong. C&P subcontracted clinicians are adverse to putting anything down on paper except for that which VA asks for. They are only given documents VA chooses to allow them to see- not the entire claims file. Bingo. There goes a fair and balanced “opinion”.

Perhaps even worse, VA will tell the QTC/VES dudes which DBQ form to use. So it’s not uncommon for them to say “use the DBQ for peripheral neuropathy for Agent Orange that had to manifest within one year of leaving Vietnam. Do not use the DBQ for DM2 neuropathy or other neurological manifestations [which is what the Vet actually suffers].”

But the AI “sees” that a clinician has not put forth an opinion about your_________ so they ask for a clarification. And another one. And another one. Then the insanity begins. “Please provide a medical opinion on if it is at least as likely as not that the Veteran’s TERA exposure to radiation and asbestos caused his peripheral neuropathy with Parkinson’s”. By now, we’re 20 c&p exams into it and no less than 17 clinicians have spoken. But they can’t see each others’ opinions so some begin to try to intuit what VA really wants them to write and say just to get them out of their hair. And worse, all these subcontractors are expected to drop everything and answer these clarification responses… which doesn’t pay as much as the original c&p exam by the way.

So who’s getting filthy rich? Each c&p exam goes for about $750-$1000 bucks a pop. The Nursey Nurse with the shiny new FNP after her name is getting a flat salary of about $40 K per year for a 30-hour work week (so VES/QTC can avoid paying for medical/dental) based on an 0800 to 1630 work day with 1/2 hour for lunch and two 15-minute Marlboro breaks morning and afternoon three days a week.

A very close friend and former LRRP who did 20 years as a LA County Sherriff once said the best way to keep the money from a bank robbery on-site was to “shoot the money”-i,e., the guys packing it. Since we can’t shoot the Presidents of QTC, VES, LHI, LHGS or Bob’s Taxidermy and C&P Exams, someone should examine where all this dough goes. I can personally attest, by going to these c&p exams with some of my clients, that the information needed to make a decision can easily be harvested in one 30-minute setting- including using the correct DBQ(s). But in order to do this, the clinician needs the complete claims folder. Oddly, in every VAF 21-2107 exam request, the VA VSR writing it makes sure the clinician gets a copy of my VAF 21 22a Power of Attorney. What could that possibly have to do with whether the Vet has Parkie’s?

VA is attempting to use AI to reduce their human employee component. Less humans with hangovers, colds and chronic kidney disease who get medical benefits equals more output production that is almost guaranteed to be error-free. Right? Too bad it doesn’t work that way. In a more perfect world we could just build AI-driven Veterans Service Centers with Drive-thru lanes. Pull up to the order window and submit your claim from a menu of pull down options. Pull around the corner and pick up the decision. Check to make sure you got what you ordered and off you go on your merry way.

AI is going to demand perfection. We can’t program in benefit of the doubt in this venue. Either you is or you ain’t. How do you put a combat presumption rider in there? Who’s in charge of manually figuring out the Barry Bumps until they update the M 21 to fix it? Duran happened in ’23. It still hasn’t been updated 3 years later. I had to take this one up to the Board to get it fixed.

Redact Duran win 5.19.26

In spite of all them long-winded speeches about how the new AMA was gonna smear hog grease all over the wheels of VA justice, it seems they just keep adding a few more miles to the tunnel and telling us it’s a work in progress. Kinda like that train they’ve been trying to build out in California since ’08 from SF to LA. The BVA is still trying to wade through their “just under 36,000 Legacy claims” that somehow spilled over into 2026. VA is still claiming 98% accuracy.  It reminds me of the CNY song. “49 reasons-all in a line, all of them good ones-all of them lies.”

Secretary Collins has to serve two masters. Three, actually. Congress and the inherent purse strings, the President’s continuing favor, and lastly the very Veterans he’s appointed to serve. This puts him in a precarious position of denying them housing at the West LA Campus for almost a decade while letting a prep school, a car rental outfit and a sports team use the VA’s campus. That we had to sue to win that no-brainer speaks volumes about the complexity of VA’s priorities.

Perhaps more in our/my bailiwick,  how can the Secretary spend millions defending the incorrect decisions made by their Agency and Board of Appeals year-in and year-out? Better yet- why? Very rarely do VA’s OGC law dogs “get it” and concede error. We could probably save hundreds of millions if VA formed an ad hoc Ombudsman group of VA employees and Veterans who could mediate these matters like adults instead of some headstrong VSCM (or BVA Board Chairman) who goes around singing “It’s Doug Collins’ Organization but the VSC(BVA) department is mine.”

I get to see the ugly underside of what goes on at the Fort Fumbles across our fruited plains. Remember, VA honchos like to say “We don’t look at how much a grant is going to generate. Whether you’re entitled to $12.5 K or $125 K retro, we cut the check.”  So how come this feller here in Pittsburgh is getting acid indigestion over a little $220 K underpayment 11 months overdue? He’s a GS-11. This is miles above his pay grade and he’s a hot mess.

Either VA is on a diet to conserve money by laying off their workers or they’re now spending it all on an endless procession of nothingburger c&p exams that only create more confusion, more questions… and more exams. Regardless of which, the net effect is beginning to make the claims process a lifetime endeavor for Veterans. No one- not even a Veteran- should be subjected to that. Wasn’t that why we raised our right hand? That, at some time in the future, assuming we didn’t end up only being remembered on Memorial Day, that our dear Alma Mater (VA) would be there for us?

Happy Memorial Day- especially to all you Gold Star Families and others who have lost your loved ones in the defense of our Great Country. Few Nations on Earth can point to 250 years of Heritage and such an enviable record of human rights. Indeed, God has shed His grace on Us.