VA Claims Office Lies : Veterans

The VA Claims Office does nothing but play word games, lie, use red herrings, and contort facts.

I just love the forms game the VA Claims Office plays when it comes to Individual Unemployability. It makes zero sense from any logical standpoint. From the standpoint of creating roadblocks for veterans and concocting excuses for denying claims, it makes perfect sense.

The VA Claims Office demands employment records – more particularly that previous employers I worked at fill out some specific form. This is the most absurd thing on its face, because the claim is for Individual Unemployability. If I had been working so much, I wouldn’t be applying for Individual Unemployability. Would I? How can the requirement to prevail on an Individual Unemployability claim be providing employment records?

Now I have a fused right shoulder. The Loma Linda VA fused my shoulder in 2007. It’s service connected. See the image below. As you can see, I have a dozen screws in my shoulder. The evidence for this is as empirical as it can get. Just to share a few things the VA Claims Office has done besides how it is failing to properly adjudicate my Individual Unemployabilty claim.

To be clear, I don’t have a 100% rating for this. Right now, my shoulder is rated at 50%. The VA Claims Office would love to take my rating away. After over 14 years from when my shoulder was fused, it has precipitated such atrophy and asymmetry that I now have problems that have crept into adjacent areas (i.e. the t-spine area of my back, known as scapularthoracic pain). In 2018, I had to leave my prior place of employment (which was only $10 per hour and part time and not even terribly physically demanding) because of how my shoulder fusion has precipitatated scapulathoracic pain.

So, in July 2018, I filed a claim. Knowing the VA applies this interpretation of the rating formula to cap me at 50%, I filed for scapularthoracic pain (i.e. pain in the t-spine area of my back) as a secondary issue to the shoulder fusion, which is service-connected.

In October of 2018, in the midst of that claim, the VA Claims Office issued a decision letter in which the VA explicitly stated that 1)My shoulder condition is temporary and not permanent, which meant that I would be subjected to periodic C&P exams to review my condition. In that same statement, the VA also predicted that my shoulder would improve 2)In no way does my shoulder undermine my employment situation at all. Both of those things are pure lies, and were written by somebody who had never met me and doesn’t know me.

My shoulder condition is as permanent as permanent can be. My shoulder is never unfused. When the VA predicted that my shoulder would improve, the VA cited “medical records”. That was a bit breathtaking, being up to the date of that letter by the VA in October 2018, I hadn’t been to a single doctor appointment in years, precisely because of how bad the VA medical system has become and how bad the rationing is. In fact, at the very date of that October 2018 letter, I was awaiting an orthopedic appointment (my first in over a decade) precisely because of the pain and discomfort the fused shoulder is causing me.

I had an orthopedic appointment shortly after the date of that October 2018 letter, and I was able to get the appointment only because then U.S. Senator Johnny Isaakson’s office intervened on my behalf. Were it not for the intervention of Senator Johnny Isaakson’s office, I never would have had that orthopedic appointment. Even with a consult and being for a service-connected condition, the orthopedic clinic tried to block my appointment. That’s how bad the rationing has become. Which I believe is something the VA Claims Office takes advantage of and, in my case, I believe they never anticipated that I would have any actual medical appointment with an orthopedic doctor that could overthrow the lies they concoct. So they take for granted that they will be able to use their own rigged C&P exams against the veteran.

So the only “records” the VA Claims Office possibly could have been citing were their own rigged C&P exams. I was subjected to 4 rigged C&P exams – all to go over the same condition – between the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2019.

So, in October 2018, the VA Claims Office predicts my shoulder would improve, and therefore I would be subjected to future C&P exams. Four months later (i.e. February 2019), I was called into another C&P exam, which was most definitely a hostile exam. I won’t belabor all of the details, but the examiner made some comments which directly contradicted my actual medical records from the orthopedic appointment I had. To be clear, the examiner was NOT an orthopedic doctor. The C&P exam was conducted by LHI.

The short summary of that appointment is that the examiner explicitly told me that “scapularthoracic” pain is “all a part” of my shoulder, thereby consolidating it into just my shoulder. The next month, I get a letter from the VA Claims Office telling me that my shoulder had improved and therefore my rating would be lowered!

None of it makes sense, because even by playing semantical games to say the “scapularthoracic pain” is all a part of my shoulder, the fact of the matter is I NEVER HAD A RATING FOR MY BACK OR T-SPINE AREA OR SCAPULARTHORACIC PAIN IN PARTICULAR! I have had a rating for my shoulder! So if the “scapularthoracic pain” was all a part of my shoulder as the examiner said, how did I end up leaving that appointment having to defend my rating for my shoulder? Yet that’s what happened to me!

The VA Claims Office also cited in its April 2019 letter the fact that there was nothing in my military medical records about scapularthoracic pain! A complete red herring! There’s also nothing about a fused right shoulder in my military medical records, but it’s service connected. To be clear, the shoulder had been service-connected, and the fusion was done by the VA after I was off active duty. And when I filed for scapularthoracic pain in July 2018, I specifically selected secondary to my shoulder, which is service connected. So the VA Claims Office knew where not to look!

Anyways, I had to spend the next two years (i.e. up until the beginning of 2021) fighting with the VA just to keep my rating intact. Eventually, the VA sent me a letter saying they ruled in my “favor”! How? My rating wasn’t lowered! When initially I filed for an increase and Individual Unemployability, but inexplicably ended up having to defend my rating. To this date, the VA Claims Office hasn’t answered a simple question: What changed between October 2018, when the VA Claims Office magically predicted my shoulder would improve, and April 2019, when the VA claimed that my shoulder had improved? The VA Claims Office has never been able to answer that. I never should have been put into that position.

My actual medical records from the orthopedic appointment I had in that same time doesn’t buttress the VA Claims Office statements at all. So when the VA Claims Office cites “medical records”, they are citing their own rigged C&P exams. My actual medical records support what I am saying. In fact, the VA even offered me steroid injections and that was codified into my medical records. For self-evident reasons, I refused. The harm that comes from steroid use, and to think I would NEVER be able to get any help from the VA afterwards for the damage! The VA Claims Office wouldn’t give a damn!

Looking back, I realized something. The VA Claims Office deliberately adjudicates claims in such a way that creates a pretext for throwing more money at contractors like LHI, and in exchange LHI helps conduct rigged C&P exams. I’m entitled to those examiner’s notes from my last C&P exam in 2019. I have asked for them repeatedly. The VA Claims Office even sent me a letter saying they would be sent to me, but they haven’t. This was many months ago. If I could get those notes, I could juxtapose them with the notes from my actual medical records and see what liars LHI are. But the VA won’t let me get them, so I can’t.

But the VA would love to send me into another C&P exam! So don’t let me see the notes from the last one, but let’s get me into another one! As if there is an exam shortage! It’s all about the process, and using the process to gaslight the veteran. Require the veteran to attend a rigged C&P exam. If the veteran sees what is going on and refuses, then use the veteran’s lack of participation in the rigged process against the veteran, to gaslight the veteran, as if it’s the veteran’s fault he/she can’t prevail rather than dishonesty on the part of the VA Claims Office.

In fact, the VA Claims Office would be more than willing to send me into a dozen C&P exams in the next year if I wanted! Meanwhile, the VA medical system is rationing care so bad that it would be like trying to win the lottery to get an actual medical appointment if my life depended on it! What does that tell you about the nature of C&P exams? Do you get this?

So if the VA lets the narratives run ahead of the facts, or just deliberately lies, they don’t care. When the VA says my fused right shoulder is temporary and would improve based upon no medical evidence whatsoever, they don’t care. They will lie to create a narrative that is friendly to their contractor LHI.

It most definitely has undermined my employment situation, especially when the only jobs I’m being offered are jobs with high turnover for people without shoulder fusions because they are so physically demanding and low paying.

I have gone through a plurality of jobs precisely because of my shoulder. I spent a few weeks at an Amazon warehouse in 2020, but had to leave that position. I spent one day with USPS as a mail handler and had to leave. There were a few other jobs I spent no more than a week or so at. To be clear, NOT ONE job have I left due to misconduct of any kind (e.g. failing a drug test, or employee theft, or violence in the workplace, etc.).

So I file an Individual Unemployability claim for a second time earlier this year. In my effort to follow up with the VA Claims Office about that claim, I have gotten a different response each time. At first, even after I filed it, the VA Claims Office literally denied I had filed the claim and urged me to file yet another one! After I persisted, they finally admitted that I actually did file a claim for Individual Unemployability in March of 2021. So they lie about the claims I have or haven’t filed!

I am unemployed right now. What I’ve encountered is if it’s a position I can do, I get passed over for it because of my work gaps. Why do I have so many work gaps? My shoulder is a huge part of it – the main part of it. When I have to leave jobs so quickly because I can’t stay in them because of my shoulder, that doesn’t look good on a resume. So, again, the only jobs I get offered are the jobs I can’t do because they are so physically demanding and nobody wants them!

There’s no question about the condition of my shoulder. There is no question I am unemployed and my highest earning year was about $5,000. But what the VA Claims Office insists upon is me supplying all of these employment records and getting employers to fill out some specific forms. Like when I spent one day at a USPS facility almost two years ago, who there is going to remember me? What is it the employer can do to prove or disprove anything? We are talking about huge facilities where there isn’t a lot of personal communication. And the longest job I had was with Amazon for about 6 weeks. So Amazon for about 6 weeks about two years ago.

It’s completely ridiculous that a claim for INDIVIDUAL UNEMPLOYABILITY should depend on EMPLOYMENT records. If I were employed, would I be filing a claim for Individual Unemployability? And what does the VA think employers are going to say? That I left those positions because of my shoulder? In today’s litigious society, no employer would word anything like that.

Let’s take my brief time at Amazon, for example. I was put into stowing, which required moving big boxes throughout my entire shift. Because of my shoulder, I had to leave shifts early. From leaving shifts early, I accumulated penalty points. Now I did go to HR and explain my situation, but that I have a fused shoulder didn’t do anything to alter that policy. Either I was going to resign or eventually I would have been terminated for accumulating so many penalty points. So I resigned.

What would Amazon records indicate? That I resigned. You think there will be an explanation by somebody who doesn’t even know me of exactly why? The exact circumstances in my life that precipitated my resignation? Ha!

My shoulder was fused at the Loma Linda VA in 2007. In 14 years since my shoulder was fused, NOT ONCE has the VA Claims Office ever acknowledged that my shoulder was fused. I kid you not. That’s how bad is their lying and word games. That’s how bad they go out of their way to ignore truth and construct strawman arguments to tear down, throw out red herrings, etc. There have been many times where the VA used the phrase “right rotator cuff repair”. You see, if they had accurately described the condition of my shoulder, they wouldn’t have been able to claim it is temporary and improving. So just ignore the truth altogether, as if by ignoring it that makes it not so!

As I’ve pointed out numerous times to others, in 14 years since my shoulder was fused, I haven’t even been able to get the VA Claims Office to acknowledge that my shoulder was surgically fused, much less the permanence of the condition. In fact, they have explicitly lied, calling it temporary! And if I can’t get the VA to acknowledge that, how will I ever get the VA to acknowledge that the problem has crept into adjacent areas, despite that having been documented in my ACTUAL medical records (not rigged C&P exams) over two years ago?

But there’s a point to that. The VA Claims Office applies a completely different and unrealistic standard on the veteran! I can’t get the VA Claims Office itself to acknowledge the condition of my shoulder! Yet, in one day of working as a mail handler at the USPS plant in Tampa, I am supposed to have all sorts of records from USPS verifying I had to leave because of my shoulder! The VA Claims Office doesn’t want to even concede reality in order to prevent me from prevailing on a claim I should have prevailed on years ago, but somehow a one day employer of mine is going to be able to shed more light on my condition than I can?

In the VA Claims Office’s latest letter, they explicitly write that they are awaiting “treatment records” from Amazon, USPS, and a few other of my short duration employers. Treatment records? Fricking treatment records? I’m sorry. I never went to a job to be treated for my shoulder! Meanwhile, my ACTUAL MEDICAL RECORDS THAT COMPLETELY UNDERMINE EVERYTHING THE VA CLAIMS OFFICE HAS WRITTEN ARE IGNORED! All the liars at the VA Claims Office would have to do is read my actual medical records. It would be impossible to have a fused shoulder and have it not negatively impact your employment situation in some way.

But, what the VA is doing here, is using this procedural matter to hold up my Individual Unemployability claim. And that’s the real purpose of this. Given the condition of my shoulder, I shouldn’t have even been having to work at Amazon or USPS. I should have had Individual Unemployability back when I first applied for it in 2018. But the VA Claims Office failed to properly adjudicate then as well. Putting me into the position of trying to seek work, even accepting jobs I know I can’t do!

Literally, the VA is asking for something that neither proves nor disproves anything and for something that never should have been! I NEVER SHOULD HAVE EVEN HAD TO GO TO WORK IN THOSE PLACES WITH MY SHOULDER! Why was I having to work for $10 per hour in the most physically demanding position at Marietta Drapery with a fused right shoulder? BECAUSE THE VA CLAIMS OFFICE WON’T DO ITS JOB AND PROPERLY ADJUDICATE CLAIMS! SO FORCE THE VETERAN INTO PURSUING WORK THEY CAN’T DO, TO THEN DEMAND RECORDS FROM EACH AND EVERY 2 DAY JOB! And if I can’t get all of these places to submit these forms, well then I will have my Individual Unemployability denied again!

My shoulder