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All the pact act does is give you more clarity on presumptive conditions. Meaning if you ever served in country or in the surrounding waters, then you qualify for military nexus.
VA is not really a black box but certain things can feel secretive. For disability ratings, you need three things:
1) diagnosis of a disease - this is straight forward. All sections of the law discuss what diseases the VA determine are eligible for disability. This also includes aggravations of prior diagnoses, etc.
2) military nexus - pact act in general gives this to you, but there are some conditions that if they weren’t diagnosed in a certain timeframe after leaving service that don’t qualify under presumptive conditions.
Note before number 3: if you get one and two, then you qualify for 0% for that condition. In general, it is easiest to prove military nexus if it is in your military treatment record, but it doesn’t have to be to get a rating. The VA uses an ‘at least as likely’ criteria for nexus so a 50/50 split goes to the vet. Just think of it as a preponderance of evidence that the military was the source of the disability.
3) how does the disability the military caused affect your life? This is where DBQs or disability benefits questionnaires come in to play. In general, if you just do a claim through the VA portal, you will likely get a P&C exam from a VA contracted examiner.
Certain things will get you certain percentages based on how it affects your life. The math is easy as well. You get independent ratings for each disease. You take the biggest one and subtract it from 100% to get you the percent you are abled, and the percent you are disabled. Let’s say your first condition is 60%, then you are 40% able bodied and you qualify for 60% disability rating. If your next rating is 20%, you take that from the able bodied portion do that equals 8% and you would be 68% disabled which rounds to 70%.
A few notes…you can have any doctor give you a DBQ. If something is not in your service record but it happened (hard landing on parachute jump) then you want to point to what actually happened. Given a lack of medical evidence then, buddy letters can help. If your friends can say the incident occurred and a corpsman treated you for a sprained ankle, and now you have arthritis, then they can help your case. If you can get a statement from the corpsman even better. Sometimes after action reports, incident reports, and supervisor testimony can help, and all of that can be evidence if you can get it. Again, you are trying to convince a GS-13 that it is at least as likely as not that this was caused my the military. The more evidence the better.
Whew, sorry for the ramble.
Burn pit exposure is not a condition. PACT has a list of specific conditions it is covering. Are you diagnosed with any one of them (ex., asthma diagnosis post burn pit exposure?)
I am - like 3 actually. But you have to file per the PACT Act separately of those claims to get them to conglomerate is my understanding.
https://www.va.gov/resources/the-pact-act-and-your-va-benefits/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=paid_search&utm_campaign=ar_pact_fy23_veterans&gclid=Cj0KCQjw4bipBhCyARIsAFsieCzx5dUwp1k4bLlV-knXmTpOTB1sykkcdKGiMy_nhgBxvg8JrM9lszwaAk2-EALw_wcB