VA Disability Ratings and How They Work
CCK Law: Our Vital Role in Veterans Law
The VA Rating Schedule is designed to compensate disabled veterans for the average impairment in earning capacity. It is intended to give veterans compensation – a dollar amount – for how severely they are disabled.
For each condition found to be service connected, veterans get an assigned rating that represents the severity of their condition. The ratings range from 0 to 100 percent, in multiples of 10 (e.g. 0 percent, 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent, and so on). A 0 percent rating means the condition is service connected, but not severe enough for the veteran to receive monthly compensation. Veterans receive greater amounts of compensation for higher VA disability ratings. Dollar amounts range from $0 to around $3,000 per month.
VA assigns a rating to each condition based on diagnostic codes. The diagnostic codes provide guidelines for rating the severity of different conditions, based on the symptoms and limitations the veteran experiences.
For example, type 2 diabetes and chronic knee pain each have their own diagnostic codes that list levels of severity specific to that condition. Each level corresponds to a different rating percentage. If a veteran has a condition that does not have its own diagnostic code in VA’s guidelines, VA will “rate by analogy,” meaning they will find the most similar condition that does have a code and use those guidelines to rate that condition.
A veteran can be rated for multiple service-connected disabilities. But VA does NOT simply add up the ratings in cases where veterans have more than one service-connected condition. Instead, VA uses a different formula (see below) to calculate a “combined rating” that then determines how much compensation the veteran will receive each month.
Luckily, you can calculate an estimate of your combined rating using VA’s Combined Ratings Table or CCK’s own Disability Rate Calculator. But for those interested in how VA gets to the final combined rating, an example is the best way to explain it.
Watch CCK Law Partners Maura Black and Lindy Nash explain what veterans need to know about disability ratings and VA math:
VA Combined Ratings Example
A veteran has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) rated 50 percent, tinnitus rated 10 percent, and bilateral hearing loss rated 10 percent. One might assume that the veteran’s combined rating would be 70 percent because 50 + 10 + 10 = 70, but this is not the case. Instead, the rating is calculated like this:
Look at the highest rating (PTSD at 50 percent) first. If the veteran is 50 percent disabled, then (according to VA) they are 50 percent NON-disabled.
100 percent – 50 percent disabled = 50 percent NON-disabled
So, according to VA’s rules, the next rating (tinnitus at 10 percent) only comes out of the remaining 50 percent that is NON-disabled.
10 percent of 50 percent = 5 percent [OR .1 x .5 = .05]
We then add that 5 percent to the 50 percent to get 55 percent disabled. The remaining, NON-disabled percentage then becomes 45 percent.
5 percent + 50 percent = 55 percent disabled
100 percent – 55 percent = 45 percent NON-disabled
The next rating (bilateral hearing loss at 10 percent) only comes out of the remaining 45 percent.
10 percent of 45 percent = 4.5 percent [OR .1 x .45 = .045]
We then add 4.5 percent to 55 percent, getting 59.5 percent. Since there are no more disabilities to combine, we can round to the nearest multiple of 10 to find the veteran’s final combined rating. Because it is greater than 55 percent, we round up to 59.5 percent (if it was 52 percent or 54.5 percent, for example, we would round down) and the veteran will receive compensation at the 60 percent level.
4.5 percent + 55 percent = 59.5 percent ≈ 60 percent disabled
Unfortunately, this means it becomes increasingly difficult to reach a rating of 100 percent with each new service-connected condition.
Want To Learn More About VA Ratings?
Check our detailed blog post about the VA Rating Schedule and what your disability rating means.
