Department of Veteran Affairs

VA Dirty Tricks Veterans Need to Know About
1) Deny or Ignore Everything
This is the most commonly used dirty trick in the book. Many government and private agencies use this as their first line defense against any claim. They will either immediately deny your claim or they will ignore it. If they choose to ignore it, they will not acknowledge that they received your claim. If you try to find out if they did or not, they will make up excuses that will cause you to wait, tell you to call back, send you on an endless goose chase from one department to another, or they will repeatedly tell you to submit it over and over again.
This is called «kicking the can down the road». It serves many purposes. The main purpose is to discourage you and make you give up or distract you and cause you to forget or miss deadlines for filing documents or appeals or whatever you need to do. If you file the same claim again it creates a new disability compensation claim date cheating you out of your back pay.
Another reason is that it distances them from the issues. This works to their advantage. Let me explain. Let’s say you filed for a back condition and the VA kicks the issue down the road for several years and in the meantime you develop some other medical conditions. Now, the VA doctors can begin to try to link your back pain to some non-​service connected medical condition. Don’t laugh because they can get very creative when it comes to this trick.
It also gives them time to confuse the issues. Suddenly, your medical records will be filled with fabricated evidence to support the VA’s position. They will twist everything you say to suit this purpose. For instance, the doctors ask you if your back hurts when you lift heavy things and naturally you tell them YES. Here’s what will be documented on your medical records:” Veteran complains of back pain from doing heavy lifting at home.” The VA just created a new cause for your back pain and it’s not service-​connected. Or even better, «Veteran injured back at home today while lifting heavy object.» See how that works? They just made a chronic condition a NEW medical condition.
On the other hand, if the VA injured you and you file an 11.51 disability claim, they do the opposite. For example, The VA tore my rotator cuff by surprising me with heavy sandbags for an x-​ray without giving me a chance to refuse. Immediately, this torn rotator cuff became an old injury, it was suddenly labeled «chronic shoulder pain» and they attempted to fabricate a history of shoulder problems. Old injuries are new and new injuries are old, which brings me to dirty trick number two.
2) False Medical Records
Most veterans don’t have copies of their military or VA medical records and depend on the VA to furnish them. Good luck with that; because the VA will both lie and say they don’t have the records or just deliberately destroy them. There goes your evidence.
The Houston VA Regional Office told me for almost three years that they never received my Notice of Disagreement until I went down to the office in person and demanded to see my C-​file and there it was on the very top of the file with their time stamp dated three years ago.
That’s why you should get copies and read your medical records every time you go to the VA because if you don’t they will fabricate false medical records for you. They do it anyway, all the time. The VA doctors and nurses will quote you as saying things that are false. Their favorite misquote is pain. My VA records state that I tell the doctors I have no pain just about every time I go there, which is a bold faced LIE. Your back could be broken with bones sticking out and they will write on your medical records that your back appears to be normal with no visible sign of distress and patient denies back pain.
Don’t think for one minute that VA doctors are your friend. They know that their job is to cover up, hide and distort medical evidence in your VA medical records and VA C-​file if it’s connected to a disputed VA claim. And, don’t think the medical doctors are the only ones who do this. Your x-​ray will be read wrong by the Radiologists. They won’t see that broken bone or compressed disk and if they acknowledge it at all, it will be coded in long Latin medical terms that you will have to look up in a medical dictionary to figure out what they’re trying to say and don’t count on VA medical doctors to explain it because they will tell you everything is NORMAL. Don’t believe me, just file a FTCA (federal torts claim act) and watch your medical records disappear like magic and new records appear debunking your claim
Ever wonder how the VA gets away with these lies? Did you know that VA doctors can legally withhold medical information from you? That’s a fact. The practice of withholding pertinent medical information from patients in the belief that disclosure is medically contraindicated is known as «therapeutic privilege.»