VETERANS BENEFITS FOR USAF RESERVISTS & ANG WITH TINNITUS AND HEARING LOSS

Are you ineligible for VA benefits because you're a "traditional reservist?"

If hearing injuries resulting from flight or aircraft maintenance duties might qualify you for VA compensation and other benefits. Here's how.

Traditional reservists aren't eligible for most VA benefits because our "active duty for training" doesn't count towards true veteran status. Regardless of how long one's initial active duty for basic and technical school might be, the law doesn't recognize that as "active service." VA recognizes completion of an active duty enlistment, or active duty during wartime to qualify a servicemember for benefits, but UTAs, annual tour, active duty for basic and other training are grouped into ineligible "active duty for training." No bennies.

BUT – there'a a big exception to that for any disabling injury or disease you might experience.

Tinnitus is just one such injury. That ringing in the ears, or wind noise or low hum is caused by loud noises. Noises like a C-123 or C-130 makes. Noises like an M-16 makes at 154dB.

Flyers, tank crews, infantry, artillery and others around loud noises in a military setting often suffer tinnitus, and VA recognizes that as a frequent disability - in fact, it is the most common disability veterans have.

And if you have tinnitus you might be entitled to VA care and compensation for that disability, and if you are, that makes you a veteran with all the benefits that wartime veterans receive.

I got into this recently to help an army reservist who had tinnitus from his time in basic training when he fired the M-14 rifle and did not have any ear protection. Noises of 85 dB and above can cause permanent hearing loss and tinnitus, and our aircraft are far noisier than that: The cockpit is steady at over 112 dB. The noise is worse in the rear!

After my altitude chamber ride at Edwards AFB I started flying in 1974. I recall that by 1975 or so we received the yellow foam earplugs and they provided some protection from noise hazards. But there was still significant noise reaching the inner ear to cause damage. This kind of damage is permanent and cumulative and can evidence itself in tinnitus and/or hearing loss even years later.

Here is my point in the VA's own words: “When a claim for service connection is based on a period of active duty for training, there must be evidence that the individual concerned became disabled as a result of a disease or injury incurred or aggravated in the line of duty during the period of active duty for training.“

That is per 38 U.S.C. § 1131 (see also 38 U.S.C. § 1110; 38 C.F.R. § 3.303(a). See CAVC Hensley v. Brown – “claimant may establish direct service connection for a hearing disability initially manifest several years after separation from service on the basis of evidence showing that the current hearing loss is causally related to injury or disease suffered in service.”( 5 Vet. App. 155, 164 (1993).” Also see VA Training Letter 10-02 at 15 (rescinded re: incorporation into VBA Adjudication Procedures Manual (M21-1), pt. III, subpt. iv, ch. 4, § D.1-3)

VA compensation for a tinnitus disability is a modest $144 per month, but the real importance here is that a hearing injury establishes legal veteran status with all the benefits that attach to being a wartime veteran (we've been in a period of war ever since Desert Storm.) Sometimes there are secondary issues to hearing loss like depression or hypertension. Rarely, there have been vets getting up to 50% disability ($995/month) based on hearing loss and complications.

You might not need them now, but benefits include pension rights, medical and pharmacy (perhaps with modest co-payments,) rehab, hearing aids, VA home loan, education, and even a new program for caretakers of veterans faced with significant loss of "activities of daily life."

If you believe you have tinnitus or hearing loss, get advice from the VA hotline, one of the veterans' service organizations like DAV or VFW, or your city/state VA office. Get a claim entered immediately because benefits are dated from when VA gets your claim, not when they approve it months later.

I hope this helps someone!