Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Adam is a veteran who reached out to the site and wanted to share his experiences with accessing VA benefits with other veterans.
As a note, Adam references VSOs as a terrific source of assistance to veterans navigating VA benefits. For a full list of VSOs, see HERE.
What were the biggest challenges you faced in accessing VA benefits?
Everything? The biggest challenge overall, especially while going to school, is just how much time it takes out of your day. The VA is so vast and bureaucratic I get transferred at least 3 times every time I try to call about something (God forbid you have to use a website). You have to set aside some serious time to access the system for your benefits, especially when calling on the phone is involved.
I’m extremely lucky to have picked a school with a dedicated GI Bill processing office, but even with them there’s been at least once every year where something got messed up in my benefits getting sent out in full or on time. I know this is a huge pain for people without that privilege, so one of my biggest recommendations in that regard is find a school with a dedicated rep or office.
What resources or organizations did you find the most useful in helping you navigate the VA?
VSO hands down. If you don’t know how to find yours, normally you can go to your local workforce office and they have contacts or database to get you connected. My current one works out of the Colorado state office and I mostly just email him when I have a question. Typically gets back to me the next day at the absolute latest.
This page from Cornell Law is also a good primer to use to understand disability ratings better.
How do you recommend veterans go about filing a claim for a service-connected disability?
Step 1: Talk to a VSO
Take time off from your first eval appt and line them up one by one after it.
List down EVERYTHING, and let them earn their paycheck to say what’s not service related.
Use the Cornell disability resource (see above) to understand how to identify the extent of damage and disablement.
You do NOT have to be completely incapable to process for these. Even 0% can help in a lot of ways.
Mark’s note: I agree. Check out this post I wrote to see why.
The money is scheduled from the beginning. You are not taking away money from people that need it, you are taking it out of politicians’ hands that would have spent it on shit like challenge coins.
Can you talk at all about potential hiccups that someone filing a disability claim may have in the process?
Not advocating for yourself during eval. A majority of my examining doctors have tried to problem-solve during an evaluation appointment, which sidetracks the whole thing and leaves a lot of evidence and questions untouched.
Should veterans try and file a claim before or after they leave the military? Why?
I think you can only file after you leave, but as soon as your dd214 is handed to you, I’m fairly certain you can go online and start your paperwork.
Mark’s note: You can start filing up to 180 days before ETS/EAS. Learn more here.
Related to that, I know it’s a pain, but during your transition do not leave anything out on your medical exams or questionnaires. You’ll have more appointments to deal with but it makes VA evidence-gathering a lot easier and less likely to get push back for it.
What should veterans know about when it comes to using their educational VA benefits?
Prestige doesn’t matter. Connections do.
Find a school and city that meshes well with you.
Go to community college first to knock out lower level classes. I promise you 50% of your freshman class you’ll never see again anyway, and 18 year old freshman are one of the most annoying things on this earth.
Mark’s note: If you are pursuing an undergrad, check out my friends at Next Step Inbound. If grad school is your plan, then you are on the right site!
What kind of frustrations have you personally experienced when working with the VA?
I literally had a doctor a few months ago say to me, verbatim, “My job is to get you down to 0 [percent disability rating]. By far it’s the evaluation doctors. Your VA GP (general practitioner) or specialists are all pretty cool people, but getting to them is the hardest part.
If there is a difficult problem you’ve been dealing with, often it’s better to just take some of your compensation money and go to a doctor on your own, if you can’t get local service through the VA. I’ve personally been trying to get something diagnosed for the past 6 months and between unalerted appointment cancelations and waiting on consults to just go through it takes forever. I had to fight with them over 8 months to get my heart issues addressed even.
Being on hold for 40 minutes straight to get transferred to the end of the line of another department or organization. Every. Single. Time.
When the websites are actually working, it’s way easier and convenient to use myhealth (or, in general, for any VA benefits). You can message people directly and avoid hold music.
Getting reevaluated for PTSD after 2 years came as a shock to me and took me into a pretty bad depression for a week. Having to revalidate yourself like that really sucks, and fights back against a lot of the progress to show mental health care as a normalized thing.
What about bright spots? Where have you been pleased with the VA experience?
Prescriptions via mail is awesome. It is a fantastic VA benefit.
The nurses in the VA are like night and day comparisons to the doctors. I know nurses give more of a shit in general but a lot of them there seem like they’re there with purpose and fulfillment.
The mental health programs that they have are pretty great once you’re in. I used the vital program for about 3 years and made a ton of progress with them. I just wish they weren’t directly tied to the VA, and more like a database referral of practitioners for things like EMDR.
Besides the VA, what resources or organizations have you found the most useful for veterans when it comes to leaving the military?
VSO, VSO, VSOs. They helped me start my claims, helped me contact my senators when the VA tried to drag their feet, and just bring a wealth of validation and resources in a difficult time.
My local chapter of Student Veterans of America is awesome. I avoided it for a while because I just wanted to wash myself of military stuff for a while, but our president at the time Josh pulled me in and showed me that not everyone portrays the image I was trying to shed. They’ve been a huge source of perseverance for me.
Bonus: where was the best chow hall you ate at in the military?
MEPS Montgomery AL, which is on an Air Force base. Even before I was in-service I remember eating a burger from there and being like “I THOUGHT FOOD HALLS WERE DISGUSTING, THIS IS AMAZING!” After that I would say when I was on CVN73 and our new SUPPO was an iron chef winner. It’s amazing what using spices can do to galley food. He had the best red pepper soup I’ve ever had in my life.