Let me take a deep breath before stating the long (to put it mildly) title of this book. The Highly Unauthorized and Wildly Fantastic Definitive Veterans’ Guide to Filing Disability Compensation Claims by R. G. Fearing is a comprehensive guide for filing for disability compensation with the Veterans’ Administration (VA). After a twenty-year career in the U.S. Air Force, Mr. Fearing finds out what a “nightmarish hell” it is to file for disability. He waited three years for his claim to be processed. I strongly suspect his claim was resolved at that point, due to his story being featured in the Baltimore Sun newspaper. This book was written as a way for veterans to benefit from the knowledge the author gained from his own experiences dealing with the VA. The book includes clear instructions about how to fill out the claim forms and what type of supporting documentation to attach. Screenshots of website pages are used to accompany many of the explanations. It is also discussed what to …show more content…
There is a detailed explanation of the difference between a 50% and higher disability rating and a lower than 50% rating. If the rating is under 50%, the compensation is not extra money; instead, a certain portion of your retirement pay becomes tax-free. In addition, a discussion of the way the percentages are calculated is a real eye-opener. For example, if you have multiple medical problems, the overall rating is not a simple sum of the percentages. For example, you may have four medical problems, each rated at 15%. The first one is rated at 15%. However, the rest are rated as a percentage of the leftover percentage out of 100%. The second disability is rated at 12.75% (15% multiplied by the remaining 85%), and the third, and fourth ones are rated even lower, in a step-down succession. As a result, the total compensation is usually much lower than you would