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You are getting hung up on the words "earning capacity" and not the previous ones "as far as can be practically determined the average impairment in".

It's not saying someone with a 100% rating can't earn a living…or even a good living. What it is saying is that their injuries have impaired how much their earning capacity could be if they didn't have those injuries, and the compensation scale they have is the best way they've come up with to compensate for it.

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I'm focused on that because the distinction is important. For people who have disabilities that aren't service-related, once their income reaches a certain level, the disability payments they receive are reduced accordingly. They aren't paid for being blind, they are being paid for the inability to earn a living. As real-life proof is shown that they can earn a living, the payment from government goes down.

That concept and language of the VA are important for the story in the OP. If veterans are being compensated strictly for the service injury, then the amount they receive should never change. In your example, the guy with the missing leg will always have a missing leg. He gets compensation for that for life.

If they are compensating for the potential for lost income based on the injury, that opens the door for what the plan the OP talked about - reducing payments if treatments are successful. The treatments could increase the potential for income. If changes like that get approved, it could also open the door for potential reductions in payments through means-testing, the way other disabilities are treated.

And you're acting as if I want to reduce payments to veterans or don't understand the distinction between visible or non-visible injuries or PTSD. As the son of a Vietnam veteran, I don't want cuts and I do understand. That's not the point. The distinction on what the payments compensate for could have real meaning for what policies could be enacted. The words matter.

I understand what you are saying, and I think we are agreeing on things much more than we disagree. Much of my posts aren't so much for you, as it is for the other posters with their ignorant takes. I'd just rather respond to you and have actual thought-provoking discussion.

It is not just about "earning capacity". Its is about an average reduction in the potential for earning capacity, as far as can be practically realized. Which makes it much less concrete and more difficult to calculate. I mean, how can you say that the vet who can't hold a job at all because of his disabilities might not have been the next Mat Best with his Black Rifle Coffee Empire? How do you put a calculation on how all those myriad of symptoms can possibly affect someone's earning potential? On the promotions and raises that my hypothetical DV Corvette missed out on? The mental toil of constant, unending pain that no pill or therapy fixes on someone's work and earning potential?

I know that before I had the first of two surgeries on my elbows, I was an unmitigated ******* most of my waking hours at home, and I wasn't much better at work. I felt like an animal with a limb caught in a trap. When I woke up after surgery, I started crying, because it was the first time in over a year that my elbows hadn't hurt. It definitely affected my career even then, and the long term problems I continue to have with my elbows continue to affect my work output. I had to stop 3 times while typing this to stretch and move my arms. How do you put a price on that?

The VA does their best. In my case, for my elbows, its a 10% rating. Taken on its own, that's $132 a month. It affects my work some. Probably more than that if you looked at the affects vs. my pay. If I was an aircraft mechanic, how much would those same elbows affect my ability to work? I probably wouldn't be able to do my $100k/year job at all, but the VA would still only pay me that $132 a month that a 10% rating gets you. So its far from ideal. But could you imagine the costs if they had to try to calculate the affect of each injury for each individual and each career change, promotion, etc. they went through? It would cost trillions to administer and take years to establish a rating for each individual.

Eliminatus said:

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It's honestly pretty shocking and sad (even with my much lowered expectations of F16 these days) to see Ags who are literally this narrow minded and ignorant about the world to judge someone by their car and their apparent "okayness" by a glance over to be judged a disability scammer and dismissing their integrity altogether.

Kudos to you for trying to get through though. To much like lecturing a spoiled brat preteen for me to attempt.

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Thanks. I've gone down this rabbit hole a few times here on this topic. Most won't change their minds, but usually I'll end up having a real discussion with one or two posters, where we both get something new to think about. And I always hope that, some of our fellow Ags who are currently or previously served who haven't or don't plan to file a claim for compensation that they've earned ready my posts, and I hope that my words help those Ags reconsider claiming the benefits that they have earned. I don't want to see them pressured by some of the ignorant and thoughtless posts of some of the people on here into not getting the help they need. The military already puts its own stigma on seeking help for mental and physical ailments. Veterans don't need that from civilians whose only knowledge of the topic comes from their own flawed conclusions and random crap on social media.

I get you. I'm responding to you because you're responding to me and because you're making better points than just "I deserve it because I'm a veteran."

Veterans get the short end of the stick on a lot of things, so I would prefer they keep the benefits they get. I just worry the language is there to change it if lawmakers really wanted to pursue it.

While lawmakers could make changes, I worry less about that than I do changes in rules implementations like the one that started this topic. Lawmakers at least have to answer to their constituencies occasionally, and reduction in veterans benefits is still mostly a political non-starter. Those same restrictions don't apply to unelected bureaucrats.

They just need to give everyone who serves good retirement/disability and then offset that by firing all the VA staff involved in all of this bureaucracy that currently handles all these appeals.

Seems almost everyone ends up getting it anyway. They just have to spend year's filing paperwork and arguing through the system. Just gut the bureaucracy and move on.

Something that effects Veterans like this rule needs serious thought and vigorous scrutiny that protects Vets.

Wes97 said:

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They just need to give everyone who serves good retirement/disability and then offset that by firing all the VA staff involved in all of this bureaucracy that currently handles all these appeals.

Seems almost everyone ends up getting it anyway. They just have to spend year's filing paperwork and arguing through the system. Just gut the bureaucracy and move on.

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Only 30% of Veterans get disability

Ag_SGT said:

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Wes97 said:

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They just need to give everyone who serves good retirement/disability and then offset that by firing all the VA staff involved in all of this bureaucracy that currently handles all these appeals.

Seems almost everyone ends up getting it anyway. They just have to spend year's filing paperwork and arguing through the system. Just gut the bureaucracy and move on.

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Only 30% of Veterans get disability

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And 100% is a very small margin of that and takes years of fighting and arguing between doctors, lawyers and VA reviewers. That is where the largest benefits are that reduce state income. Still 100% support them getting every single one of those benefits though.

Trying to understand if people are on opposite sides of this or not.

Will put out some questions to take a stab at it:

1) Do veterans with service related disability deserve benefits to account for that? I assume most of not all posters would agree.

2) Do said veterans above deserve disability benefits for medical issues that have nothing to do with their service? My opinion is no, but interested to hear other side and why.

2) Are there veterans with disability who are gaming the system? I am not sure the board agrees. My personal opinion is that yes, of course there are, and my personal experience tells me this happens more often than many would like to think.

3) ASSUMING answer to number #2 is YES, should said veterans who abuse the system have consequences such as lowering/eliminating their benefits? Very interested to see this answer. I would say yes.

4) Does it even make sense to address this issue given there is so much fraud elsewhere and given this is even more untouchable than the national debt? I say probably not.

And finally

5) Should non-veterans even voice an opinion on this matter? I think absolutely YES given they are taxpayers.

I am more interested in succinct yes no with brief support for each rather than drawn out emotive responses

Want to add another question ?

Do Veterans who are Chapter 61 retired before 20 years of service deserve to have their earned retired pay benefits deducted dollar for dollar for disability pay from the VA ?

Ag_SGT said:

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Wes97 said:

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They just need to give everyone who serves good retirement/disability and then offset that by firing all the VA staff involved in all of this bureaucracy that currently handles all these appeals.

Seems almost everyone ends up getting it anyway. They just have to spend year's filing paperwork and arguing through the system. Just gut the bureaucracy and move on.

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Only 30% of Veterans get disability

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I was obviously overstating, but even then I wasn't trying to imply that every Veteran receives disability payments.

I was stating that the people that file for VA/Military disability payments (Mostly) eventually get it, but that is only after they spend years fighting through all the bureaucracy and red tape.

If we as a country paid decent military retirement/disability/whatever at the back end of their service/life then we could offset a big chunk of that expense by gutting all of the existing VA bureaucracy.

We pay our military members pretty puny wages, so I have no problem giving them some sort of more generous retirement/disability back payments for their later years. They are serving the country and doing something that I definitely didn't want to have to do. Of all the things that my tax $ go towards this is one of them I have no problem paying.

This is a much more specific scope than I'm asking. Looking at the issue briefly it does seem ripe for revision.

File5 said:

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Trying to understand if people are on opposite sides of this or not.

Will put out some questions to take a stab at it:

1) Do veterans with service related disability deserve benefits to account for that? I assume most of not all posters would agree.

2) Do said veterans above deserve disability benefits for medical issues that have nothing to do with their service? My opinion is no, but interested to hear other side and why.

2) Are there veterans with disability who are gaming the system? I am not sure the board agrees. My personal opinion is that yes, of course there are, and my personal experience tells me this happens more often than many would like to think.

3) ASSUMING answer to number #2 is YES, should said veterans who abuse the system have consequences such as lowering/eliminating their benefits? Very interested to see this answer. I would say yes.

4) Does it even make sense to address this issue given there is so much fraud elsewhere and given this is even more untouchable than the national debt? I say probably not.

And finally

5) Should non-veterans even voice an opinion on this matter? I think absolutely YES given they are taxpayers.

I am more interested in succinct yes no with brief support for each rather than drawn out emotive responses

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That is not even the framed question of the topic though but it would be a good remedy if someone was proven to do it since they should lose that % of their disability entirely. This was reduction in benefit pay if any type of remedy such as medication for PTSD or in the example in the article, a wheel chair to a paraplegic, provided a benefit to the veteran against the disability in question. You also have 2 numbers 2's btw.

Concerning the OPs topic:

"The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has halted enforcement of the controversial "Evaluative Rating: Impact of Medication" rule. Although it briefly went into effect on February 17, 2026, VA Secretary Doug Collins announced on February 19 that it will not be enforced now or in the future following intense backlash from veterans and advocacy groups."