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VETERANS' ADVOCATE JIM STRICKLAND: TO VSO, OR NOT TO

VSO, THEREIN... -- "...I did not make any significant progress with

my disability claim until I fired my VSO and started to do it myself."

Veterans' Advocate Jim Strickland provides regular columns for VA Watchdog dot Org.

If you would like to contact Jim about his columns, you can email him here...

The archive of Jim's articles is here...

To find an answer to a specific VA benefits question, use the VA Watchdog search engine... click here...

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TO VSO, OR NOT TO VSO, THEREIN...

by Jim Strickland

It's more of the same; unfounded rhetoric offered up to vulnerable people in a highly controlled setting. The people offering advice are those who have a dog in the fight...Veterans Service Officers who make a good living by giving advice to veterans. No dissenting opinion is invited or allowed. They often have a captive audience and that's just how they like it.

The article in the Waynesville, Mo “Daily Guide” is a rehash of all of the advice that we know too well; We're once again told that we shouldn't file our own disability claims with the VA...we are just too dumb to go it alone.

Read it all here http://www.waynesvilledailygu
ide.com/news/x1902437659/VA-veterans-organization
s-say-Don-t-try-to-file-disability-claim-without-help

If you've followed my work for the last year or so, you understand I believe that the advice above is wrong. I am a victim of the Veterans Service Organization monopoly and I did not make any significant progress with my disability claim until I fired my VSO and started to do it myself.

The fact is that I believe that the poorly trained and barely skilled representatives assigned to my case cost me tens of thousands of dollars.

Like so many veterans, I was told I needed a Veterans Service Officer to file my claim. I wrongly assumed that was how the system was designed to work. Many years passed and I saw a couple of dozen strangers who represented me and not one of them knew me or my file.

Like so many veterans, I would call my designated VSO with a question and not have the courtesy of a reply. I was taken aback when I learned my chosen organization didn't allow its VSO's to use email. If I called, the phone would ring seemingly forever and I usually received the message that my named VSO wasn't there any longer and my file was now with someone new.

When I'd ask to speak with that individual, they were rarely available. If I asked to use their voice mail, it didn't exist.

It was a revelation to me the day I met an honest-to-God VA employee and vented my frustrations to him. He informed me that if I wanted to, I could write the VA a letter directly. I didn't need the approval of some anonymous VSO, the VA has no policy on who they accept a claim from, it's all the same to them.

Lewis Carroll knew my elation when he wrote, “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” I felt free and unrestrained to learn I could represent myself.

Then I wrote a letter to my VARO. I had a reply soon after. It made sense. I understood. I responded and achieved my raise in benefits.

I studied. I read, I researched. To be successful in winning your disability award requires thought, patience and work. I have never said it's easy, I've said that you can do it yourself. If you're looking for easy, you're in the wrong place.

“ 'It’s sort of like going into court without a lawyer; you really need to know how to get the maximum amount of your VA benefits' said Denise Boyd, one of two military benefits counselors assigned by the Veterans' Administration to Fort Leonard Wood.”

What? Really? Filing a claim is like going to court? But a court is an adversarial place where you're often trying to prove that you're innocent after being charged with a crime.

If what Denise Boyd said is true, why then does the VBA make it so easy for a veteran to file a claim on-line?

If you click here http://vabenefits.vba.va.gov/vonapp/main.asp  you'll discover it isn't like going to court after all...it's an application that tells you exactly what to do and what's required.

About 3 years ago, Bradley S. Barton, Esq., the Commander of the DAV, that 800 pound gorilla sitting at our table, said that the VBA is a “largely administrative claims process, which is designed to be open, informal and helpful to veterans.”

I'd like to ask Denise, “If approaching the VA is similar to going to court without a lawyer...well, darn it, why can't we hire a lawyer?” But I can't ask her that because I can't call or email her. You see, her email isn't published, like her telephone number, it isn't for the public to know. Direct emails and phone numbers of VSO's aren't to be divulged to veterans, who knows the trouble we might cause?

“Only about 16 percent of veterans file their own claims...”, according to Stanley Baughn, the director of veterans' service programs for the Missouri Veterans Commission. Mr. Baughn offers no citations for his data other than to say that it's from the VA.

He goes on to tell us that we won't get as much money if we file for ourselves...once again, he repeats the oft repeated theory but can't support it with any data. There's a reason for that, the data doesn't exist. There is no valid study that offers any substantial proof that a veteran is better off with or without representation at the initial filing of a compensation claim...it does not exist.

My own dubiously scientific studies of the last 2 years indicate that veterans who are capable and who choose to handle their own well grounded claims win their deserved benefits 100% of the time. No, I don't have the data to share with you. I thought that was one of the rules in this game...we just make this stuff up as we go along, right?

Why the discrepancy? Why do I believe you will be a winner if you do it yourself and the VSO doesn't? A reader wrote to me some months back with her own take on why the Veterans Service Organizations were so very defensive. Vicki Foley writes, “Dear Jim: I can't even begin to describe how angry I get when I hear the so-called advocates for disabled veterans try to surreptitiously cut them off at the knees for the sake of their own jobs.”

Vicki was commenting about the line that was drawn in the sand when the VA and several “Veterans Service Organizations” vehemently opposed legislation to grant a veteran the right to use a lawyer when filing a VA benefits application. The same organizations that want you to believe that “It’s sort of like going into court without a lawyer...” don't want you to have a legal right to retain a lawyer. They want you to use one of their people instead.

Could it be that you're being misinformed so that the VSO's can keep their good jobs? These are good jobs after all. The money is great for a guy or gal without a college degree. The hours are the same as the VA. Plenty of holidays and good benefits would have me fighting to keep my job too.

At the same time they want to represent you, they want you to join their organization. Membership is falling at these groups and they're scrambling to keep the bar and the bingo going.

Way back then, before I became enlightened, a Veterans Service Officer who I managed to corner told me a little secret. He hinted to me that my service in his organization would instantly be better and I'd have better contacts and more respect in that organization if I took out a Life Membership. Having a Life Membership is a sort of Holy Grail and lends the holder miraculous powers given by the organization.

I forked over the money even though I could ill afford it at that time. I never heard from him again. It changed nothing in their faulty approach to my benefits but I do get a very slick marketing magazine now.

I wish I'd taken the subscription to Popular Mechanics instead.

Reading more of the “Daily Guide”, we learn that, “Major national veterans organizations...help train service officers to understand the details of federal regulations on disability ratings. 'If you want to know what the rating would be because you are missing the end of your thumb, that will tell you,' ” the article quotes, “Everything is covered in excruciating detail.”

I'm not sure I understand that. Is that some secret veterans can't find by looking here? http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_04/38cfr4_04.html

If a veteran wants to know how his claim should be handled, he can look here http://www.warms.vba.va.gov/M21_1MR.html

All of the laws, rules, regulations and cases are available to you for free right there on your computer.

I'll repeat the bottom line for you; If you are a veteran and you believe that you have a disabling condition that is related to your military service, I am of the opinion that you are always better off to to it yourself.

There are conditions to that statement.

You must be able to read and write at or about an 8th grade level.

You must be willing to take the time necessary to do a few hours of reading on the Internet at the VA web site. Help is available on the VA Watchdog site too.

You must have a computer and know how to use it. This means that you should be able to use a search engine to research for information that will help you. You need a good printer. Having a document scanner and knowing how to use it to copy records in preparation for sending them to VA is a big plus.

You'll have to be able to follow instructions. The VA is very good about telling you what needs doing and the time frame it's got to be done in.

You must be patient and tenacious.

It really is just that simple. If you can't do those things, you need a VSO.

If you are able to accomplish those requirements, you're going to soon discover that you are your own best advocate.

After all, nobody cares about your claim as much as you do.

-------------------------

posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org

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