Matthew Hill: Hello, and welcome to another Hill and Ponton VA video blog. This is Matthew Hill, Carol Ponton. And today we want to talk to you about a little known secondary disability that veterans have and are rarely compensated for, because they never claim it. And that is urinary frequency, mostly due to back problems, or diabetes.
Carol Ponton: Diabetes, I, – In fact there’s a form that the compensation, and pension examiners have to complete about diabetes. And on that form it talks about urinary frequency, how often do you go during the day? If you go every hour to the bathroom, that’s a 60% rating.
Matthew Hill: 60% rating on top of whatever your back, or diabetes rating is.
Carol Ponton: Right.
Matthew Hill: And let’s put that into perspective, because the most common rating for diabetes-
Carol Ponton: Is 20% for the diabetes.
Matthew Hill: And the most common rating for back is 20%.
Carol Ponton: 20%.
Matthew Hill: So here you are with a 20% rating, which in my opinion especially for back is never an adequate rating, because there’s certainly a lot of pain involved, but you get that secondary rating for 60%.
Carol Ponton: And it can be maybe because you’re having leakage because of that. This is very common, both with back problems, and diabetes. And you have pads, which by the way the VA will furnish for free. If you have to change those four times, or more a day, that’s a 60% rating. If you’re getting up three, or four times at night, that’s a good rating for you. So you need to think about, is this something that has occurred since I started with diabetes, or since I had my back problem. And if it is, you need to file for that.
Matthew Hill: These are all ways, we speak about this quite often, is that there’s the primary rating, there’s primary service connected disability. But then on top of that, there are typically secondary disabilities that are caused by the primary one, excuse me.
Carol Ponton: And the VA set them up, because they knew diabetes 20% really doesn’t compensate you for what’s going on.
Matthew Hill: Right.
Carol Ponton: So they have set up a number of other things that this causes, so that you can be compensated fully.
Matthew Hill: But you’ve got to ask for it.
Carol Ponton: You got to tell them about it.
Matthew Hill: In this situation.
Carol Ponton: And in this situation most people don’t want to talk about it. And when I ask them, they all say yes, and they wonder how I know. And it’s because this is a common side effect of diabetes, and back problems.
Matthew Hill: And so again, to make sure you’re getting the maximum amount of benefits you deserve, you want to include urinary frequency, especially in these two issues.
Carol Ponton: Exactly.
Matthew Hill: Thanks for doing this.
