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Newsmaker: Lt. Gen. James Terry Scott

By Tom Philpott

Spring 2008

For two-and-a-half years, retired Army Lt. Gen. James Terry Scott chaired a congressionally-appointed commission tasked to conduct the first comprehensive review of veterans’ disability benefits in half a century. The Veterans’ Disability Benefits Commission’s 113 recommendations are expected to serve as the foundation for congressional action, in 2008 and beyond, to make sweeping reforms in the evaluation and compensation of veterans with service-connected ailments and injuries.

Scott, a career infantry officer and Army Ranger, talked with “Military Update” columnist and Military Money contributor Tom Philpott. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

General, can we start with your observations on what the commission set out to do?

We were tasked by law to do an extensive examination of issues related to veterans’ disability benefits. That hadn’t been done since the Bradley Commission in 1956. We looked at 31 separate issues, most of them focused on quality of life; the VA’s disability rating schedule; post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); compensation for unemployable veterans; conditions presumed related to service; transition issues for separating servicemembers; concurrent receipt; claims processing and more.

Overall, your report is very positive document for veterans...

I’m sure veterans’ service organizations are going to take issue with us on a few points. For example, we strongly urge a holistic approach to PTSD. That means better training and expertise among clinicians that make the initial diagnosis and among adjudicators who set disability level… In the main, the recommendations are all favorable to veterans.

The commission recommends an immediate increase in VA compensation of up to 25 percent. Why?

Current disability awards only compensate for average loss of earnings capacity. There is nothing to account for reduced quality of life. We believe more seriously disabled people – those confined to wheelchairs or who are double above-the-knee amputees – have their qualify of life diminished considerably. So merely compensating them for earnings loss doesn’t address it.

A person with the 10 percent disability probably doesn’t suffer a great degradation of quality of life and is probably not going to get much of a boost. We just recommend that the VA study it and that Congress adopt it. In the interim, we suggest an increase of up to 25 percent. The “up to” allows bigger increases for the seriously disabled vis-à-vis the less so.

What issues proved more difficult to tackle than you expected?

We have 25 million veterans, 2.5 million of them disabled. We have a war going on with people [being disabled] on a daily basis, unfortunately… So we can’t just throw everything out and say next year we will have a brand new system. The toughest thing was coming to grips with where we are. Given that then, what’s the best thing to do in the long term for veterans?

The impetus for forming the commission was concern among Republican leaders, who then controlled Congress, that veterans’ costs were out of control. Yet your commission endorses many compensation improvements, including a call to end the ban on concurrent receipt of both military retirement and VA disability pay and to end the dollar-for-dollar offset in widows’ survivor benefits by VA Disability and Indemnity Compensation. Was the commission influenced by the impact of current wars on veterans and their families?

As we worked our way through and became more familiar with these issues, we came up with a lot of recommendations that are cheap and easy and some that are hard and expensive. But we believe all of them will add value to the system.

We tried to stay focused on the entire veterans’ population. Of course, there isn’t any doubt that the immediacy of the issue with young veterans coming back, had some effect on where we went to make that their transition is a better experience. 

Did you add up how much more would be spent each year on veterans if all your recommendations are adopted or enacted?

No, we didn’t. When we discussed options, we talked about the cost of a recommendation just so we’d know what we were talking about. But we did not let that be the determining factor of whether we made a recommendation.

The commission decided early on not to change the definition of a “service-connected” disability, which some critics had said should be narrowed to make disability benefits more efficient and, in some regards, more fair. But the commission didn’t accept that.

No, and I am comfortable with that. During the 32 years I was on active duty, I was under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whether on leave or on duty, whether stateside or overseas. That’s still true for all servicemembers.

Given where we are, and how we do things, I don’t see how you can differentiate. If you try to say, for example, it can only be in combat that certain things happen, well, how about the people training? How about the people on airplanes on the way over? You’d get onto a slippery slope if you tried to narrow it.

The commission doesn’t recommend many specific changes to disability rating schedule amounts or levels. But you say the Department of Veterans Affairs should do a review and revise the schedule.

We don’t see a requirement for throwing out the baby with the bath water. If you said “The whole rating schedule is terrible’ we ought to get rid of it,” I would say, “And replace it with what?” The rating schedule is salvageable. It can be modified.

One of the more egregious failures of the schedule is it lumps together PTSD, other mental illnesses and traumatic brain injury (TBI). We said, as a matter of priority, the VA should get into that aspect of the rating schedule and sort it out. Lumping all mental disorders together makes them very difficult to rate and, probably, inequities result.  So a priority should be review of criteria for evaluation of ratings for TBI, all mental disorders and PTSD, accounting for new diagnostic classifications, medical criteria and medial advances.

That ought to be updated immediately and, within five years, the whole schedule should be reviewed.

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Tom Philpott writes “Military Update,” a syndicated weekly news column for daily newspapers near military bases. It can be read online each week at www.military.com and www.fra.org.

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