Hope fades for a quality-of-life raise for all disabled vets

Published 7:15 pm Friday, August 27, 2010

Disabled veterans were thrilled in 2007 when the Veterans Disability Benefits Commission asked Congress to enact an immediate quality of life increase to disability payments from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The special increase, said commissioners, should be across the board, benefiting all veterans with service-connected health conditions, and it should be as large as 25 percent for the most severely disabled.

The commission argued that disability pay compensates for average loss in lifetime earnings but fails to provide any added monetary award for diminished quality of life.

Quality of life “is addressed in a limited fashion” by special monthly compensation payable for loss of limbs or use of limbs, said the commission. But it called for development of a systematic method for evaluating and compensating for the impact of disability on quality of life. Meanwhile, Congress should allow an interim increase of up to 25 percent.

What happen to that idea?

It fell flat, said retired Lt. Gen. Terry Scott, a former Army Ranger who chaired the benefits commission.

“The terms ‘across the board’ and ‘up to 25 percent’ were not well received anywhere outside the veterans community,” Scott explained.

His own position also has changed, Scott said.

That’s significant because he not only had chaired the commission through years of hearings and study but now chairs the Advisory Committee on Disability Compensation.

That panel was created by Congress in 2008, part of the Veterans’ Benefits Improvement which directed that the VA secretary modernize the disability compensation system and address its mammoth backlog.

Scott’s fallback position to an across-the-board raise, which the advisory committee also seems to embrace, is to pay something extra to recognize loss in quality of life only for the most seriously disabled veterans. That could be done by expanding the monthly portion of disability pay or by adopting a similarly rigid model for compensating for “non-economic loss.”

“Where I have retrenched, based on this committee’s studies and the things we’ve done, (is to) pretty much agree that the additive monetary benefit for quality of life should be based on really severe disability.”

The good thing about using the monthly payment model, Scott said, “is that it is very tightly prescribed. There is not a lot of latitude to deal with. You fit inside the parameters of one of those categories or you do not…It is not subject to a lot of subjectivity (or) any sort of gamesmanship.”

Feedback from VA and Congress “was that a targeted approach for those suffering from severe disability, and a very clear ‘non-economic’ or quality-of-life loss (payment) is a sellable proposition,” Scott said.

The 11-member advisory committee is a lower-profile entity than was the benefits commission. It has met 20 times since fall of 2008 with responsibility both to advise and to pressure the VA secretary on steps, schedules and priorities for modernizing disability ratings.

VA officials last year developed a master plan for doing the work over six years. Scott’s committee, which includes medical and scientific experts, is monitoring that effort closely.

“The principle goal of the committee is to continue to over watch the plan, making sure it is not abandoned in favor of some other priority. In other words, we are probably going to be their hair shirt in terms of saying, ‘OK, we’ve seen your plan. You said you’re going to do this in 2010 and this in 2011. Tell us where you are.’”

Scott applauded VA’s work so far to upgrade the ratings, including changes in the way traumatic brain injury and burn scars are rated. The master plan, he said, includes a schedule to review disability ratings across all 15 body systems.

“If they are able to execute that plan, I think it will aid veterans, present and future” and reduce the backlog of claims, Scott said.

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