On Feb. 17, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced an interim final rule on disability determinations through the Federal Register. Under the new rule, a veteran’s disability rating would be based upon their ability to function when using medication and treatment rather than upon their baseline functionality without interventions. The rule was expected to impact at least 350,000 disability claims awaiting adjudication in the department’s system.
After significant pushback against the rule among the veteran community, on Feb. 19, VA Secretary Doug Collins announced on X that the VA would halt enforcement of the interim final rule. Collins wrote that “many interpreted the rule as something that could result in adverse consequences,” and said that VA “does not agree with the way the rule has been characterized,” but “always takes Veterans’ concerns seriously.”
On Feb. 27, after continued outcry from the veteran community, the VA fully rescinded the rule.
The Special Operations Association of America is relieved to witness the removal of the interim final rule. On account of the public distress it has created, SOAA still finds value in voicing our concerns about the rule as it was written.
Many veterans were concerned that the VA’s interim final rule was an attempt to scale back the gargantuan $441.3 billion budget the VA requested for fiscal year 2026, a ten percent increase over fiscal year 2025. SOAA is aware that the costs of disability claims have risen greatly in the past decade, climbing from $60.21 billion paid to over 4.1 million veterans in fiscal year 2015, to $125 billion to to 5.3 million veterans in fiscal year 2022, to a staggering $195 billion for 6.9 million veterans in fiscal year 2025.
SOAA feels that the interim final rule would have made up for the escalating cost of care in ways that harm veterans. The interim final rule also seemed poised to increase medical dependency, and could have been a disincentive for service members to improve their conditions.
Kate Kovarovic, a former Counsel for the VA, told SOAA that the interim final rule appeared to be “an exceptionally anti-veteran change to the regulations.” Kovarovic explained that the rule would “have a chilling effect on veterans’ willingness to seek out meaningful treatment for their conditions, because we’re essentially putting them in the position of having to choose between the benefits that many people rely on to survive and pursuing treatment for the actual condition.”
Kovarovic, and many in the veteran advocacy realm, were particularly worried about the rule’s impact on patients seeking mental health services. “There are already so many considerations that veterans have to make when it comes to pursuing treatment,” Kovarovic explained. “Once they’re out of the military, they’re worried that they’re going to lose their security clearance if they pursue treatment. They’re worried that they’re not going to be able to keep their jobs. They’re worried that if they report this, that it could affect how people view them.” Kovarovic explained that the new rule would have added “an additional burden to that process.” She argued that this would then “convince veterans that they have a choice to make between feeling better and being able to survive.”
Deconstructing the Interim Final Rule’s Intent
The VA argued that its interim final rule “correct[s] judicial interpretations that VA has concluded misconstrue the role of medication and treatment in evaluating functional impairment.”
A growing body of legal precedent indicates the VA must base its disability ratings on the
extent to which a veteran’s general quality of living is impacted by their injury. In some specific cases, diagnostic criteria indicate that a rating should also consider the “ameliorative effects of medication” the veteran receives. With the new interim rule, the VA decided that, for all veterans, “if medication or treatment lowers the level of disability, the rating will be based on that lowered disability level.”
Though the VA only mentioned applying the interim final rule to claims under adjudication, there was no clarity about whether the VA could choose to apply the rule to veterans whose claims have been finalized.
SOAA asked the VA whether new verbiage about the role of medication and treatment could be applied to cases that are not under review for adjudication. The VA did not issue a response.
Circular Reasoning and a Lack of Explanation
In the Federal Register, the VA explained that “without this change, VA could be required to specifically ascertain and then discount the ameliorative effects of medication on certain disabilities and then assign a disability rating based on the level of disability a veteran would suffer if not for that medication.” The VA called this an “unquantifiable, hypothetical, and unwarranted standard that would compensate veterans for a level of disability they are not actually experiencing.”
VA also argued that failing to enact this change would create “systemic delays in the adjudication system.”
Many disabilities, however, exist in a state of flux. Dr. Ryan Ziegler, a SOAA member and former VA primary care provider, explained that for a patient whose treated state vacillates, it would create a burden on the system, and a drain on the patient, to reevaluate their condition every six months through different practitioners who may not have familiarity with the patient, much less be colocated with them at the time of their evaluation.
Ziegler also admitted that as a former practitioner in the VA system, he has witnessed the waste, fraud, and abuse that drain off disability funds, and sees the value, particularly for patients, of using interventions that help them overcome and improve disabilities.
Unfortunately, there was little explanation of what kinds of medications and treatments will be included under the interim final rule. SOAA asked the VA whether these would encompass interventions like physical therapy, mental health therapy, prostheses, and holistic treatments, but received no response.
Understanding the Population
In the wake of VA’s decision to rescind the interim final rule, SOAA hopes that the VA will listen to the full-throated outcry from veterans and advocates about the shortcomings in the interim final rule as it was presented. One good place to start, as the Military Times reported, is in the 20,000 comments left by advocates and veterans on the Federal Register’s Feb. 17 announcement, which is a demonstration of how important the disability rating and compensation system are to the veteran population.
