The Department of Veterans Affairs released a public notice this week announcing changes to how disability ratings are assessed. Since Donald Trump took office again last year, the government has been looking for ways to deprive veterans of benefits.
The VA’s new rules setting disability levels – which the government uses to determine what benefits veterans receive – appear to be another step to undermine the provision of the men and women who have served the country.
The new rules, which went into effect on Tuesday, give the VA the ability to reduce veterans’ earned disability ratings in two key respects, departing from years of established U.S. case law on workers’ compensation.
Focus on medication and ability to work
First, the VA can now consider medications when assessing disability. For example, tinnitus or ringing in the ears is one of the most common conditions for which the VA assigns a disability rating. Under the new rule, if the VA finds that aspirin or painkillers reduce tinnitus, it can lower the grade or deny an evaluation altogether.
Second, the VA may factor a veteran’s earning capacity into the evaluation. If the VA determines that a veteran is employed, it may deny disability or retirement benefits entirely. This is a cruel and arbitrary change. If you give a leg for your country, you should be compensated for it – whether you do a job that requires the use of that leg or not.
Meaning of degrees of disability
VA disability ratings are government recognition that military service has resulted in permanent impairment that affects quality of life and long-term earning capacity. They are awarded on a percentage scale. For example, one veteran may be rated 100 percent permanently disabled, while another may be rated 10 or 20 percent for minor injuries or ailments.
The percentage determines the monthly payment, health care priority, housing and nursing programs, and other benefits. This is not unemployment assistance. It is compensation for harm suffered in the line of duty.
For generations, VA disability compensation has followed the same legal logic as workers’ compensation. Compensation is for the injury itself, regardless of how well you deal with it. This was established in US law by Ingram v. Collins codified a 2025 case against VA Secretary Doug Collins, in which the court ultimately ruled that if an evaluation rule does not specifically mention medications, the VA must evaluate a veteran’s condition as it is, without medication support.
The decision was intended to protect veterans from losing benefits regardless of whether they follow medical advice. The new rule announced this week specifically mentions the need to address the “adverse effects” of Ingram v. To “minimize” Collins.
Reactions and criticism
Before the new policy was announced, the VA assessed conditions based on their underlying severity over time, not whether medications temporarily reduced symptoms or whether the veteran was employed. A veteran could work and still receive compensation because the payment acknowledged the existence of the service-connected injury.
Tinnitus, PTSD, asthma, and chronic pain were assessed based on medical impairment and functional impact in daily life, while separate programs addressed disability.
The VA maintains the new rule does not represent a significant policy change. “This regulation simply formalizes VA’s longstanding practice of setting disability levels based on veterans’ service-connected impairments and the medications they take to treat those impairments,” VA spokesman Pete Kasperowicz said in a statement to ROLLING STONE.
Veterans associations see it differently
“For years, courts have held that the VA cannot reduce assessments based on the effects of medications but must consider a veteran’s actual functional impairment when assessing service-connected disability,” Veterans of Foreign Wars said in a statement. “This new rule reverses that standard by directing investigators to evaluate impairments as they present themselves, including the effects of medications, and to ignore untreated baseline severity.”
VFW National Commander Carol Whitmore added that while the “VA has the authority to change the assessment plan, it must do so without adversely impacting veterans.”
Coleman Lee, national commander of the veterans organization DAV, said in a statement that the group was “extremely disappointed and alarmed by the VA’s decision to issue an interim final rule today that could potentially reduce disability compensation for millions of disabled veterans” and that the “new regulation would allow the VA to lower disability levels for veterans who are taking medications to control their medical conditions or reduce their symptoms.”
Political context
The VA’s rewrite of disability rating rules, like many of the agency’s actions since Trump took office again, is consistent with Project 2025, which called for a series of actions that would negatively impact health care and other benefits for veterans. “Efforts to expand disability benefits to large populations without adequate planning have led to a loss of veterans’ trust in the VA,” wrote Brooks T. Tucker in the infamous right-wing political manifesto. In fact, the opposite is true.
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are already trying to limit care for veterans through bills that would divert funds from the VA to outside private providers. However, the changes in disability levels are a backdoor way for the government to continue pressuring veterans without congressional approval.
The new rule changes could dramatically change the way the VA decides compensation and disability claims, which account for more than 50 percent of the VA’s total budget. As Trump calls for a historic $1.5 trillion military budget for 2027 – which Congress supports – while running a trillion-dollar budget deficit, it once again appears that veterans will pay the price so billionaires and trillionaires can get their tax breaks.
