re: 40% of all living veterans are on disability benefits

Many half arse soldiers come back and lie about how affected they are to steal.

That simple.

Most don’t have military greatness like my family so it makes me laugh that all of these people have to cheat.

My family has earned everything we have ever gotten, never took money for any hurricanes, didn’t lie to insurance companies etc. and everyone else is a fricking cheater.

frick all of you cheaters. Also, I’ll wave from the top. It pays to be honest.

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I do know a veteran who gets full disability benefits for sleep apnea.


I don't know what degree of benefits he gets, but I know a guy who gets them for sleep paralysis.

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Sleep apnea is around a 30% rating.

I have an uncle who was wounded during the breakout from the Pusan perimeter in 1950 or 51. He left the Army in 1954 and with help from the Jefferson Parish VA assistance officer, filed and has been getting something in the range of 10 or 20% disability for the last 70 years.

As for me, I'm at 100% and it took me over 18 years after my retirement at age 55 to get there. If I had stayed on active duty and gone straight on to my 20 years at age 42, I probably wouldn't have much of anything.

When I got my retirement physical in 2007, the doctor's summary was simple, "COL Butch, you are no longer medically qualified for military service." That sentence sent me to the VA and started the process.

So you didn’t make 20?

Everyone I know in this range has had knee replacements and hips. Yall are savages.

Who is against tightening this up? I see so many down votes on people that are describing someone they know that works a normal job, and perhaps a physically demanding one, that is 100% disabled.

I'm active duty and the amount of fat soldiers that talk about gaming the VA when they're getting out is unreal. These people haven't seen combat, don't "PT", don't jump out of airplanes. Normal desk jobs or blue collar and white collar (officer).

Back and PTSD is probably the highest in my anecdotal experience of a dozen+ people. Followed by sight and/or hearing loss. Lots of these people are in their 30s or 40s, so some back, eye sight or hearing loss is just aging.

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these threads always bring out the scammers in defense of scamming

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They also always bring out all the jealous bitches. If the military pay and benefits sound so great, go sign up yourself. Otherwise quit pocket watching the people who did.

When I first got out and was taking college classes, occasionally people would say something like you're lucky your college is free and its like no, "luck" had nothing to do with it. Its not like I just randomly got my college paid for while you have to go into debt for it. You're free to take the same path I did.

Same with people complaining about veterans getting disability pay. Go sign up and spend months/years in the middle east away from your family surrounded by explosions and gunfire, and find out how much the money actually makes up for what you went through when you get out.

Certain MOSs should automatically get a rating for tinnitus. I had to fight for mine. Forward Observers, Artillery Crews (not) FDC, Mortar Men, Infantrymen, and probably Tank Crews. Not sure about Navy or Airforce MOSs. But Marines and Army those should definitely get it.

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If you didn't serve, you shouldn't be commenting in this thread.

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They are taxpayers; they have every right to complain in this thread. No different than every service member that was injured on job has the right to collect the benefits they earned.

Their anger should be redirected to those that set up the system not the that the veterans themselves. In my opinion the title of the benefit is the biggest problem. Using the term disability is clearly misguiding the expectations of the average taxpayer.

I did run the report through an LLM, and the explanation was much less fraud focused, and more along the lines of the "third rail" that can't be touched:

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First, the legal standard: presumptive frameworks (Agent Orange, then Gulf War illness, then PACT-era burn pits) shift the burden off the veteran by law. That's not laxity in adjudication—it's Congress deciding the government eats the uncertainty rather than the claimant. You can disagree with that policy choice, but a claim granted under a presumption isn't a claim granted loosely; it's granted under a different rule. Second, filing behavior: transition programs, VSOs, and claim consultants drive far more comprehensive filing than the Vietnam cohort ever had access to. A veteran today files for nine conditions because the system is built to surface all nine; a Vietnam veteran filed for one or none because nothing prompted otherwise. That's a rate-and-completeness change, and it plausibly accounts for a large share of the per-veteran gap. It's the most quantitatively significant factor, and it's mostly not fraud—it's people claiming things they're legally entitled to that they previously wouldn't have.

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Younger but only by a few years