If you are curious about how the VA processes disability claims, you can get a little insight by using this little trick that I stumbled upon.

Go to Google.com and in the search window type site:https://www.va.gov/vetapp01/ rheumatoid arthritis

That will return several hundred results of all the appeal cases that the Department of Veterans Affairs Regional Office in Atlanta, Georgia had for Rheumatoid Arthritis. Names are omitted which is a good thing, but you will be able to see how they operate and why they denied or approved the appeal.

Now here are some more secrets to how the above search on Google works.

site: = This is telling Google that you want to search a particular website, which you are going to provide

https://www.va.gov/vetapp01/ = This is the website that you want to search. You need to provide the folders that you want to search (which is vetapp01 – vetapp23) There appear to be 23 different folders, each with different cases. I tried to use wildcards, but Google wasn’t having any of that.

rheumatoid arthritis = This is the illness, disease, or medical condition that you want to read about.

When I was doing research for all of my claims, it allowed me to see what I might be up against.

Keep in mind that these are only appeals, which are those claims that have been denied and the veteran has filed an appeal to have their case heard again.