In a previous video, I talked about the three things you have to prove in your VA disability claim. The third of those three things that you have to prove, there’s a connection between your current disability and your service, usually through an injury or an illness or some other event. The VA calls this service connection. You may also hear some people call it a nexus or a medical nexus. It’s important to remember that you have the obligation to prove this as the veteran making the claim. And it’s also important to realize that the lack of service connection is one of the main reasons the VA denies claims for disability benefits. So it’s important to get this right now.
I’m going to be talking about service connection as it relates to direct service connection, aggravation, and secondary conditions. There are other issues related to service connection that I won’t get into today with this video. But to get right to the point, I’ll say that nine times out of 10, if not more often than that, in order to prove a service connection, you are going to need a doctor to write an opinion letter that says it is at least as likely as not that your service caused your disability.
Now that phrase, “at least as likely as not” is critical, it is the minimum level of certainty that your doctor needs to have in order for the VA to grant your service connection. It doesn’t have to be more than that. It’d be great if your doctor is willing to say it’s likely or very likely. I don’t see those often, but, those are nice. At a minimum, your doctor needs to say, it’s at least as likely as not that your service caused the disability. Now that likely language is very important. The VA often denies claims when the medical opinion says it’s possible that the service caused the disability or the service may have caused the disability. The officer deciding the claim. We’ll often say that’s too speculative as far as opinions go. So the likeliness language is important. Keep that in mind when you talk to your doctor about the opinion that you need
But let me step back a little bit. So why is a medical opinion important in the first place? The answer revolves around the complicated nature of medical causation. What specifically causes a medical condition. You know, even doctors are hesitant to say with certainty that this thing or this event caused a medical condition or disability. Because doctors are so uncertain, the VA is just frankly, not going to take your word for it.
Take an example like migraines, for instance. So if you suffer from migraines, and you can link it to some very specific things that happened in your service. The VA is still not just going to take your word for it. They’re going to need a doctor to say that these, those events in your service are the reason you have migraines today, or rather, it is at least as likely as not, those are the reasons you still have migraines today. Similar for say, joint issues. You can probably point to a long list of injuries you suffered in service. You’re running every day, jumping, you know, all sorts of things. The military is hard on the body, and everybody knows that, but you walk into the VA and showing, you know, the long list of times that you went to sick call, it’s not good enough. You need a doctor to say it’s at least as likely as not that all of these injuries caused the current joint issues today.
So, just keep that in mind. There are other issues with service connection. And like I said, I’m not going to get into those today, but those are things like presumptive conditions around exposure to agent orange or service connection for chronic medical conditions. And obviously I can go into a longer video about aggravation and secondary service connection, but I’ll save those for other videos later. The main thing right now, and it’s the most important thing for the vast majority of VA disability claims is that you have to get your doctor to say that it is at least as likely as not that your service caused your disability. That’s the main point. And as always, if you’re struggling with the VA and you’d like some help send me an email, a text, give me a call. I’m happy to see if maybe I can help you out.