A new law about VA disability kicked in on November 9, 2000. It’s the Veterans Claims Assistance Act (VCAA for short). It was congressional reaction to a court ruling that VA could not assist with disability claims unless and until those claims were well grounded. VCAA says (I think?) that your claim need not be well grounded in order to trigger the VA’s duty to assist you with your claim.

In the past, tens of thousands of claims were denied as not well grounded. It was an easy way for VA to get rid of claims without expending a lot of effort. VCAA replaced the well-grounded test by requiring VA to assist with claim development unless “no reasonable possibility exists that such assistance would aid in substantiating the claim”. Also, VA need not help “pending the submission by the claimant of essential information missing from the claimant’s application”. My opinion? My bones tell me the new language will be misinterpreted, used and abused. Congress was too wishy-washy. There’s too much wiggle room in the VCAA and worms just naturally wiggle when allowed to do so. I hope I’m wrong. I hope the VCAA turns out to be a good thing for veterans but only time will tell.

But what I really wanted you to know about the VCAA was it’s “grandfather” provision. For many veterans, this will be good news because you’ll get a second chance to prove your “lost” claim.

Any VA disability claim, denied or dismissed between July 14, 1999 and November 9, 2000, because it was not well grounded, is subject to readjudication. Those claims can be heard again, but only if you request that they be redone. And, you have two years from November 9, 2000 to make the request. Many, many thousands of claims fit this description for this time period. But the claimants who lost those claims must know of this opportunity and make a written request to VA to have these denied claims readjudicated. VA has no obligation to notify affected veterans of this opportunity.

A whole lot about the VCAA is not clear. VA is drafting regulations to implement the new duty to assist policy and those regulations may clarify matters in a few months when they are done. I’ve studied a recent interim VA instruction and it does appear that a free VA medical examination may be much easier to get whenever nexus or a medical link between inservice injury/disease and current disability is questionable -- and in most claims that is a critical question. Of course, it will be a VA exam by a VA doctor and some veterans have wondered whether VA docs are completely candid in these contexts. There are other aspects of the VCAA which VA and the courts will refine or mangle as time goes by.

Only one thing is reasonably clear at this juncture; if a claim was finally denied as not well grounded during the July ‘99 to November ‘00 period, claimants have two years to request, and receive, another chance. Another bite at the apple. Whatcha got to lose?