“Fuzzy Math”, is more like math with several months of growth, it is well beyond “fuzzy”. When working with a Veterans Affairs Disability rating, you need to first understand it’s a combined rating, NOT an accumulative or added rating. (That’s why 50% + 50% doesn’t equal 100%.)

I spent countless hours trying to figure out how the VA determines a veteran’s disability rating. And I think I can explain it in English.

You take the percentage for any particular medical condition, you take your current rating and you
put that and your other disabilities in a blender, turn on and puree everything and then simply make up a number.

Seriously, let me try to explain this mess. Keep in mind that the only reason for something like this is to make it more difficult for veterans to get a reasonable disability claim. If you were honestly concerned about making sure every veteran gets the claim that they deserve, you would make it easy for them and use an accumulative method.

The VA uses a concept that they call “Whole Person Remaining”. “Whole Person Remaining”, is often called “able-bodied rating”. When you joined the military, the military considered you 100% able-bodied or there was 100% of a “Whole Person Remaining”

When you get a disability rating from the VA, you become less able-bodied or less of a “Whole Person Remaining”
With every disability rating you receive, the VA takes that out of your able-bodied rating.

We will use “Jon”, who was in the Army for 4 years. While he was on active duty, he hurt his back.

As a veteran, he filed a claim and he received a rating of 20%.

This means Jon is 20% disabled, and 80% able-bodied

Now Jon has filed a claim for his left knee, and he received another rating of 10%. To get his overall rating, we need to take that 10% out of his 80% able-bodied rating.

The math for that .2 x 80% is 8. We need to take that 8 out of his 80% able-bodied making him now 72% able-bodied

To get his new disability rating we need to take his current disability rating of 20% and add 8 to it for a new rating of 28% rounded up to make a 30% disability rating.

The higher your disability rating, the harder it becomes to actually receive a higher rating.

Now we will use “Mike” for the next example.

Mike filed his first claim for several issues, including, his right shoulder, left foot, and both of his knees.

Claim #1
Right Shoulder Strain (also claimed as pain) is granted with an evaluation of 20%
Left foot strain with degenerative arthritis is granted with an evaluation of 10%
Left knee strain (also claimed as pain and limited range of motion) is granted with an evaluation of 10%
Right knee strain (also claimed as pain and limited range of motion) is granted with an evaluation of 10%