re: So I was listening to Tony Aguilar on Tucker, and I am wondering about military disability

Yes. Everything you just said. Keep shouting it from the rooftops. It's shameful.

It's become a welfare scheme. Two parts, one is a cultural failure where vets now think they are owed....that's hard to change.

The other side is how congress/politics have created laws that allow people to qualify as disabled more easily than ever before.

If you changed planes in Saigon in the 1960s you can claim exposure to Agent Orange. If you saw something bad while working your military job, PTSD now can get you a check and they make it fairly easy to prove.

If they made left-handedness a disability you'd better believe a lot of able bodied lefthanded people would be getting a disability.

The solution is to tackle this in Congress but Congress will never touch this stuff as its not politically advantageous to go after entitlements.

As a veteran myself, I've been pressured many times by fellow vets to claim and "get what is owed to me" and I reply and say I'm not disabled, they often just say, you are leaving money on the table etc. No shame, no honor and just selfish.

I'm all for taking care of combat wounded and for people who were hurt on on the job. But there needs to be harder means testing and we need to recertify after some time and audit folks who get it. Never happen due to no one wants to look like they don't care about vets

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As a veteran myself, I've been pressured many times by fellow vets to claim and "get what is owed to me" and I reply and say I'm not disabled, they often just say, you are leaving money on the table etc. No shame, no honor and just selfish.

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I've had this argument with so many friends. Good dudes. Good conservative dudes, who I align with on virtually everything, and they refuse to acknowledge their blatant hypocrisy.

100% military disability, or 100% VA disability?
Not the same thing.

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It’s a tough conversation because people want to chastise you for “attacking servicemen” when you bring it up but it absolutely needs to be audited and restructured immediately. I believe disability pensions are a pretty big percentage of our military budget.

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Our govt spending is rife with tough questions that never get fully explored. The context that's always missing is the possibility of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. We're on that track and when the goose is dead, everybody gets nothing.

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Can anyone help clarify?

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Yes, I can.

I'm in private practice but not infrequently get VA referrals. Many of them are legit (VA either is making them wait too long for surgery or denying it all together for some dumb reason and they allow these vets to seek outside opinions). However, alot are trying to "slyly" use me as a third party to help them up their disability level.

Here's an encounter I had a few weeks ago: I saw a guy who has back issues that are almost 100% service connected IIRC. I was seeing him for his run of the mill hip arthritis. He was very pushy in requesting I clearly document that his hip has worn out directly because of his back issues. This is in an attempt to now service connect his hip. I politely told him "I will document what I always document in these cases."

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Then he/she should not be getting “disability” payments.
Then he/she should not be getting “disability” payments.

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There is certainly quite a bit of abuse going on within the VA system, and I know a lot of people consider nuance to be a dirty word, but if you wish to effectively advocate against government policy or law, nuance can't be totally ignored. In the case of VA disability vs. "civilian disability" the nuance, as defined by law, is particularly visible and pronounced.

The VA defines its "disability compensation" program as "a tax free monetary benefit paid to Veterans with disabilities." This language is legally significant as it establishes the program as both a benefit of service and compensatory in nature, rather than preventing destitution as SSI and SSDI are designed to do. Hence means-testing is essentially prohibited as the purpose is explicitly to compensate for injury which isn't weighted by income, assets, or ability to work; but simply on what sum the government has deemed the injury to be 'worth.'

Not a perfect analogy but VA compensation is more like a pre-negotiated settlement you receive after an on the job accident. You might make good money and work again but you receive the settlement nonetheless.

Again, this isn't a defense of widespread gaming of the system, or even a defense of VA disability compensation in general, but just an attempt to explain what it actually is because you're not going to change it by arguing against what it isn't.

100% disabled simply infers to how much the amount that you receive from the Military is taxed. That percentage is calculated by the VA. It has nothing to do with whether you can function or work.

I'm prior full time military and I don't like the term Disabled Veteran. Because in most cases, it doesn't mean what the majority of non-military Americans perceive.

To me, 100% disabled is those who can no longer serve or work because they lack the physical or mental ability to do so. And that would mean doing nothing in which they could make a living on their own.

My wife's cousin gets 100% military disability because he fell out of the back of a truck and broke his foot about 15 years ago. He's not even 40 and is perfectly fine to go get a job but doesn't. He also went through a V.A. program and got an emotional support dog that he takes everywhere. He was never in a combat zone.