Sleep Apnea and Tinnitus VA Ratings: What's Actually Proposed, What's Still Just Proposed, and Why Your Filing Date Matters

Quick answer: Nothing has changed yet. As of September 3, 2026, the sleep apnea and tinnitus rating criteria are still a proposed rule — published February 15, 2022 and unfinished for four and a half years. H.R. 9237 Section 108, the legislative version, has not become law; the House postponed final passage in July 2026. And if you already hold a rating, 38 CFR 3.951(a) says a readjustment of the rating schedule "shall not be grounds for reduction of a disability rating in effect on the date of the readjustment unless medical evidence establishes that the disability to be evaluated has actually improved." So if you are separating in the next 6 to 12 months, the panic headlines should change exactly one thing about your plan: they are an argument for getting your conditions documented before you take the uniform off, not an argument for firing off a half-built claim to beat a deadline that does not exist. The real deadline in front of you is the Benefits Delivery at Discharge window, 180 to 90 days before separation. That one is on your calendar right now.

Here is the situation most people are actually in. You are somewhere between 12 months and 60 days from your date of separation. You have a CPAP, or ringing in your ears, or both, because a large share of us do. And your feed has been full of headlines since June telling you that VA is about to gut sleep apnea and tinnitus ratings, that a million veterans will lose money, and that you had better file right now.

Two of those things are being reported accurately. One of them is bad advice. Let me start with the part that affects your next 90 days, and put the regulatory play-by-play further down for anyone who wants it.

What Is Actually in Effect Today

The criteria VA will rate you under, if you file this month, are the ones sitting in 38 CFR Part 4 right now. Not the 2022 proposal. Not H.R. 9237. The current schedule.

Tinnitus today: standalone 10 percent under DC 6260

Tinnitus is rated under diagnostic code 6260 in 38 CFR 4.87. The current entry is short: "Tinnitus, recurrent" carries 10 percent, and a note directs that you "assign only a single evaluation for recurrent tinnitus, whether the sound is perceived in one ear, both ears, or in the head." It is the most commonly granted service-connected disability across the veteran population, for the obvious reason that we spent careers on flight lines, in turrets, next to generators, and on ranges.

The thing that makes tinnitus unusual, and the thing the proposal would change, is that it is currently rated as its own disability. You do not need a compensable hearing loss to get it. That standalone status is why a 10 percent tinnitus rating shows up on so many decision letters, and why removing it would be felt so broadly.

Sleep apnea today: the CPAP structure under DC 6847

Sleep apnea syndromes are rated under diagnostic code 6847 in 38 CFR 4.97. The current criteria are four levels, and they are worth reading in the original rather than in paraphrase:

• 100 percent — chronic respiratory failure with carbon dioxide retention or cor pulmonale, or requires tracheostomy.
• 50 percent — requires use of a breathing assistance device such as a continuous airway pressure (CPAP) machine.
• 30 percent — persistent day-time hypersomnolence.
• 0 percent — asymptomatic but with documented sleep disorder breathing.

So the "CPAP equals 50 percent" shorthand is, for once, basically accurate. The 50 percent level turns on the requirement for the device. You do not have to show that the treatment failed, and the criteria do not ask whether the machine works. That is precisely the feature the 2022 proposal and H.R. 9237 Section 108 both go after.

What "proposed rule" means, and how long this one has sat

A proposed rule is VA publishing a draft in the Federal Register and asking for public comment. On February 15, 2022 VA published more than one of them. The document that carries sleep apnea and tinnitus is FR doc 2022-02049, titled "Schedule for Rating Disabilities—Ear, Nose, Throat, and Audiology Disabilities; Special Provisions Regarding Evaluation of Respiratory Conditions; Schedule for Rating Disabilities—Respiratory System." The mental disorders changes are a separate proposed rule published the same day, FR doc 2022-02051 (87 FR 8498). Comments on both closed April 18, 2022; VA's press release described it as a 60-day comment period. After comments close, the agency can publish a final rule, publish a modified final rule, publish a new proposal, or do nothing at all.

VA has now done the last of those for four and a half years. Both documents are still typed "Proposed Rule" on federalregister.gov as of September 3, 2026, and no final rule for these body systems has published. That is not a secret plan; it is what a controversial rulemaking looks like when it stalls. And it is the single most useful piece of context for deciding how much to reorganize your life around it.

What the Proposal Would Change

Here is what is in the proposal and where each piece comes from. Every row traces to a primary source or a named outlet, so you can check it yourself rather than take my word for it.

Sleep apnea rated on responsiveness to treatment

The phrase VA used is "evaluate it based on its responsiveness to treatment." What that means in practice, if it were finalized as drafted, is that the question shifts from do you require a breathing assistance device to does the treatment work. Someone whose CPAP resolves their apnea would, under that logic, present as less disabled than someone whose apnea persists despite treatment.

You can see both the clinical argument for that and why it lands badly. It is defensible from a "compensation reflects current impairment" standpoint. It is also a criteria structure under which doing the right thing — using your machine every night — reads as evidence against you. That tension is a large part of why this proposal has been stuck for four and a half years.

Tinnitus as a symptom rather than a standalone disability

The proposal would treat tinnitus as a symptom of an underlying disease rather than a condition rated on its own. Practically, that means the ringing would be accounted for within the evaluation of whatever underlying condition is causing it — most often hearing loss — instead of carrying a separate 10 percent.

The obvious problem, and the one commenters raised, is that plenty of people have significant tinnitus with hearing thresholds that produce a zero percent evaluation under the audiometric tables. Under a symptom-based approach, those veterans could end up with a service-connected condition and no compensation attached to it. I am describing the mechanism, not predicting the outcome.

The mental disorders piece nobody talks about

This is worth stating clearly because the coverage almost never does. The same February 2022 announcement included a companion proposed rule on the mental disorders criteria — a separate Federal Register document, 2022-02051, published the same day — and it runs in the opposite direction from the sleep apnea and tinnitus changes. Per VA's press release, the proposal would establish a 10 percent minimum evaluation for any service-connected mental health diagnosis, and would remove the requirement that a veteran demonstrate total occupational and social impairment to receive a 100 percent evaluation.

Anyone who has read the current mental health general rating formula knows how high that total-impairment bar sits in practice. Removing it is a meaningful liberalization, and the 10 percent floor would end the situation where a veteran is granted service connection for a diagnosed mental health condition at zero percent.

Two Separate Tracks, and Why People Conflate Them

Most of the confusion in this story comes from two completely different processes being reported in the same sentence. They have different timelines, different actors, and different consequences for you.

Track 1: VA rulemaking

This is the February 15, 2022 proposed rule. It belongs to VA as an agency. It moves through the Administrative Procedure Act — proposal, comment, final rule, effective date — and it is the track VA's own February 2022 no-reduction statement applies to.

The live question on this track is timing, and the reporting is genuinely muddled. Newsweek reported on September 1, 2026 (updated September 3) that VA Compensation Service Executive Director Nina Tann told Congress that "VA anticipates publishing the final rules for all four body systems in three rulemakings by the end of FY 2026" — while also reporting that VA spokesman Quinn Slaven told Newsweek "No changes are planned or imminent," and that the department is still reviewing the proposal and considers it to need "significant changes" before it could be finalized.

Those statements point in different directions, and I am not going to resolve them for you by picking the scarier one. What I will not do is tell you a final rule will publish by September 30, 2026. VA said the opposite in the same article. An anticipated publication date in congressional testimony is an internal target, not a commitment, and agency rulemaking targets slip as a matter of routine.

Track 2: H.R. 9237 Section 108

This is legislation, which means Congress, not VA. H.R. 9237, the Take Care of America's Veterans Act, was introduced by Rep. Mike Bost on June 10, 2026. Section 108 is the portion dealing with disability rating criteria for conditions including sleep apnea and tinnitus, and it is the specific target of the organized opposition.

What Section 108 actually says

Reading the introduced text rather than the coverage of it, Section 108 — headed "Reforms Relating to Department of Veterans Affairs Disability Ratings" — would do four things:

• Sleep apnea would be graded 0 percent when asymptomatic regardless of treatment; 10 percent when treatment provides incomplete relief; 50 percent only where treatment is ineffective or cannot be tolerated because of a comorbid condition, absent end-organ damage; and 100 percent only where end-organ damage is present. In other words, the current 50 percent for requiring a CPAP becomes 10 percent for a CPAP that works.
• Tinnitus "may not be assigned a separate compensable disability rating," except that "a grade of disability of 10 percent shall be assigned for tinnitus only when tinnitus is diagnosed as associated with service-connected hearing loss that is otherwise noncompensable."
• The revisions would apply to claims filed after the date of enactment.
• The revisions "may not serve as the basis for reducing, discontinuing, or otherwise adversely affecting compensation that was in effect on the day before the date of the enactment of this Act."

Where it actually stands, per the House Rules Committee record: a closed rule (H. Res. 1423) was agreed to 215-211 on July 14, 2026. A motion to recommit failed 210-211 on July 16, 2026 (Roll Call 249). Final passage was postponed. As of September 3, 2026, Newsweek reports the bill "did not receive a final passage vote."

Those vote margins are the story. Four votes on the rule, one vote on the motion to recommit. A bill whose floor math is that tight, with passage postponed rather than held, is a bill nobody is confident about. It has not passed the House. If someone tells you it has, they are wrong, and you should discount everything else they say about this.

One caveat on the text above: the closed rule provided that an amendment printed in the Rules Committee report "shall be considered as adopted," so the version that went to the floor in July was already an amended one. Everything quoted here is from the bill as introduced. If it moves again, re-read it.

Why "47 senators oppose" headlines are about a proposal, not a rule in effect

Military.com reported on June 25, 2026 that 47 Democratic and independent senators wrote to VA Secretary Doug Collins in opposition to the proposed rating changes, that 15 military and veteran organizations signed their own letter on June 22, 2026 aimed specifically at Section 108 — "Section 108 would, for the first time, write the reduction of a service-connected disability rating directly into law to fund other spending" — and that the Congressional Budget Office found nearly one million veterans would have their monthly compensation reduced by the sleep apnea change.

Present that neutrally, because that is how it should be read. The nearly-one-million figure is CBO's estimate of a legislative proposal — a score of a bill section, produced by the office whose job is scoring bills. It is not a VA projection, it is not a count of people who have lost anything, and it is not a description of a rule in effect. It is also, for exactly those reasons, not something I am going to repeat as though OutProcessed independently verified it. Attribute it to CBO, note the letter came from senators and organizations opposing a bill section, and move on.

The useful takeaway from the opposition is narrow but real: 47 senators and 15 organizations lining up against a section of a bill is a meaningful political obstacle. That is information about how likely this is to happen quickly. It is not information about your current rating.

What Happens to a Rating You Already Have

This is the question that generates the most anxiety, and it deserves a careful answer rather than a reassuring one.

VA's stated position

In the February 2022 press release announcing the proposal, VA said: "No change to a Veteran's current rating would occur due to these proposed changes." The release went on to say ratings would not be reduced unless a veteran's disability had actually improved.

Take that for what it is. It is VA's public position, in writing, dated, about its own rulemaking. It is not a statute. It is not binding on a future Congress that legislates independently. And it was written about the 2022 draft, not about whatever a 2026 or 2027 final rule might say. It is a reasonable thing to rely on and a bad thing to treat as a guarantee.

The regulations underneath — one broader than people assume, one narrower

Two regulations get cited constantly in this conversation, usually by people who have not read them. They do very different jobs.

38 CFR 3.951 is the one that actually answers the question people are asking, and it says so in a single sentence. Paragraph (a), in full:

"A readjustment to the Schedule for Rating Disabilities shall not be grounds for reduction of a disability rating in effect on the date of the readjustment unless medical evidence establishes that the disability to be evaluated has actually improved."

That is a regulation, not a press release. If VA revises the rating schedule, the revision by itself is not grounds to cut a rating you already have on the date of the revision — VA would need medical evidence that your disability actually improved. Paragraph (b) is the separate and better-known 20-year rule: a disability continuously rated at or above a given evaluation for 20 or more years will not be reduced below it except on a showing of fraud.

Two things worth being precise about. Paragraph (a) protects the rating in effect on the date of the readjustment — it says nothing about what criteria apply to a claim you file afterward. And do not mistake its regulatory status for fragility: VA could reword 3.951(a), but the no-reduction rule behind it is not VA's to repeal. It comes straight from the statute, 38 U.S.C. § 1155, whose last sentence says a schedule readjustment shall "in no event" cause a rating in effect on the readjustment date to be reduced "unless an improvement in the veteran's disability is shown to have occurred." Rulemaking cannot delete that; only Congress can.

38 CFR 3.957 covers severance of service connection for a disability that has been in effect for 10 or more years, and says it "will not be severed except upon a showing that the original grant was based on fraud or it is clearly shown from military records that the person concerned did not have the requisite service or character of discharge." Here is the part people miss: it protects the service connection, not the percentage. Ten years of a service-connected condition does not lock in your evaluation level. It makes it very hard for VA to decide the condition was never service-connected in the first place. Those are different protections and only one of them is about money.

What Happens to a Claim That Is Pending When Criteria Change

Different question, and it is the one that actually bites people in your position — because a claim filed in the BDD window can easily still be open six to twelve months later.

The both-criteria practice

The general practice VA has followed on prior rating-schedule revisions is to evaluate a pending claim under both the old and the revised criteria and apply whichever is more favorable to the veteran. That is the pattern. I want to be honest about the sourcing on it: the research behind this post could trace that practice to Board of Veterans' Appeals decisions applying it, rather than to a single regulation that states it in one clean sentence. So treat it as how VA has handled prior revisions, not as a rule you can hold anyone to.

Why an increase can't be effective before the change's effective date

The half of this that is written down plainly is the effective-date mechanic. Under 38 CFR 3.114, an increase in compensation granted because of a liberalizing change in law or regulation generally cannot be made effective earlier than the effective date of that change.

So even in the good scenario — new criteria publish, they happen to favor you, your claim is still open — you do not collect back to your original filing date for the portion of the increase that comes from the new criteria. Which means "file early to get in under the old rules" and "file early to capture a possible liberalization" are not the same bet, and only the first one is coherent.

None of this is a reason to sit on a documented claim. It is a reason not to build a filing strategy on guessing which criteria will be in force when your claim closes. Related reading on how the rating criteria interact with treatment you are already receiving: the VA medication rule under 38 CFR 4.10 covers the same underlying tension — whether being treated successfully should reduce what your condition is worth on paper. That one is instructive precisely because it did not stick: VA published it as an interim final rule on February 17, 2026 and rescinded it ten days later, on February 27, 2026. Rating changes that look inevitable in the headlines sometimes are not.

Where This Collides With Your Separation Timeline

Now the part that is actually actionable, because unlike the rulemaking, your DOS is a fixed date.

The BDD window is 180 to 90 days out, and you must be available for exams within 45 days

Per VA.gov and benefits.va.gov, Benefits Delivery at Discharge claims are filed between 180 and 90 days before separation. You need a known separation date, and you must be available to go to VA exams within 45 days of the date you submit the claim. You also have to include a completed Separation Health Assessment Part A Self-Assessment with the application. Fewer than 90 days left and you are out of BDD — you can still file a standard pre-discharge claim.

That 45-day availability requirement is the one that quietly kills BDD claims, and it has nothing to do with rating criteria. If your last 120 days are a deployment, a school, terminal leave three time zones away, or a PCS to a home of selection, you can miss exams and get bumped out of BDD entirely. Sort that out first. It is a bigger risk to your claim than any proposed rule. Our military to civilian transition timeline lays out where BDD sits against everything else competing for those months, and the VA disability preparation checklist covers what to have assembled before you file.

What filing early actually costs you

Here is the trade nobody making the "file now!" argument bothers to state.

A claim is decided on the evidence in front of the rater. If you file at 175 days out with a condition that has one sick-call note from 2021 and no current workup, you are not locking in favorable criteria — you are buying a decision made on thin evidence. A zero percent or a denial is not a placeholder. It is a decision you now have to overcome, on a condition you could have documented properly first.

Do not file a half-documented claim to beat a rule that may never publish. That is the whole recommendation. If the sleep study exists, the CPAP is prescribed, the audiogram is on file and the tinnitus is in your record, then file inside the window — you were going to anyway. If those things do not exist yet, the highest-value use of your remaining months is creating them, not submitting paperwork that documents nothing.

One more thing to sort out before you file, unrelated to any of this but frequently overlooked: if you are receiving separation pay, understand how VA disability separation pay recoupment works before your first payment date. People are genuinely blindsided by that one.

The SHA is where the diagnosis and in-service nexus get created

This is the highest-leverage paragraph in the post.

Whatever criteria are eventually in force, they get applied to your record. A rater cannot evaluate a condition that does not appear anywhere. The Separation Health Assessment — and specifically the Part A self-assessment you fill out yourself — is the last easy opportunity you get to put a condition, its onset, and its in-service cause into a military medical record while the appointment is free and the clinic is a short drive away.

For these two conditions specifically, that means:

• Sleep apnea: a diagnostic sleep study on file. Not "my spouse says I snore." A study, with results, in your record. If you have a CPAP, make sure the prescription and the diagnosis both appear in your service treatment record, and pull your compliance data if your machine reports it.
• Tinnitus: reported in your own words on Part A, with when it started and what you were doing when it started — the flight line, the range, the generator bay, the specific deployment. Tinnitus is subjective by nature, which makes your contemporaneous report of it the evidence.
• Both: the in-service connection stated explicitly, with dates. "Onset spring 2023, following six months on the flight line without consistent hearing protection availability" is worth more than a checked box.

Get this right and the criteria question becomes VA's problem instead of yours. Get it wrong and no version of the rating schedule helps you. The separation physical preparation guide covers how to walk into that appointment ready instead of filling out Part A in the waiting room.

Where the Honest Uncertainty Is

What follows is what I do not know, stated plainly, because a post like this is worth less than nothing if it papers over the gaps.

1. Whether the rule publishes, and when

No idea, and neither does anyone writing about it. Congressional testimony describing an anticipated FY 2026 publication and a VA statement that no changes are planned or imminent appeared in the same article. I have not seen those reconciled anywhere. Both were reported by Newsweek and both are attributed to VA sources. Draw your own conclusion; do not let anyone sell you theirs as fact.

2. What a final rule would actually say

Four and a half years of comments sit between the 2022 draft and any final version. Agencies modify proposals in response to comments — that is the entire point of the process. Everything in this post about "what the proposal would change" describes the February 2022 draft. A final rule could look meaningfully different, and reading the draft as a preview of the final is a common and reasonable-sounding mistake.

3. Which version of Section 108 anyone would actually vote on

The Section 108 text quoted above is from H.R. 9237 as introduced. The closed rule adopted in July self-executed an amendment printed in the Rules Committee report, so the text on the floor was already something else, and a bill that comes back after a postponed vote frequently comes back changed. Read the introduced text on govinfo yourself, and check whether a newer version exists before relying on any of it.

4. The both-criteria practice on pending claims

Flagged above and worth repeating. The consider-both-and-apply-the-more-favorable approach is how VA has handled prior rating-schedule revisions, sourced to Board decisions applying it. It is not a guarantee, and I could not tie it to a single regulation stating it outright. The effective-date limitation in 38 CFR 3.114 is the part you can actually cite.

5. How the protection regulations apply to your specific rating

I have quoted 38 CFR 3.951(a) and 3.957 directly rather than paraphrasing them, so the text is the text. What I cannot tell you is how either applies to your file — whether a given evaluation counts as "in effect on the date of the readjustment," what medical evidence VA would treat as establishing actual improvement, or how a reexamination scheduled independently of any schedule change interacts with it. Those are questions for an accredited VSO or a VA-accredited attorney looking at your actual decision letters, not a blog.

6. Nothing here is a prediction

I have deliberately not told you the rule will publish, will not publish, will be favorable, or will be unfavorable. I do not know. What I am confident about is the decision-level advice: document your conditions, file inside the window, do not submit a thin claim to beat a date that does not exist.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did VA already change the sleep apnea and tinnitus disability ratings?

No. As of September 3, 2026, the criteria you are rated under are the ones already in 38 CFR Part 4 — tinnitus at diagnostic code 6260 and sleep apnea at diagnostic code 6847. The changes people are reacting to come from a proposed rule VA published on February 15, 2022, and a proposed rule is not law. Newsweek reported in September 2026 that VA Compensation Service Executive Director Nina Tann testified VA anticipates publishing final rules for four body systems in three rulemakings by the end of fiscal year 2026, and that VA separately said no changes are planned or imminent. Those two statements are hard to reconcile, and neither one is a published final rule. Until a final rule appears in the Federal Register with an effective date on it, nothing has changed for you.

If the rules change, will my existing 50% sleep apnea or 10% tinnitus rating be reduced?

The direct answer is in 38 CFR 3.951(a): "A readjustment to the Schedule for Rating Disabilities shall not be grounds for reduction of a disability rating in effect on the date of the readjustment unless medical evidence establishes that the disability to be evaluated has actually improved." That is a regulation, not a press release — a schedule revision by itself is not grounds to cut a rating you already hold, and VA would need medical evidence of actual improvement. Paragraph (b) separately protects a rating held continuously at or above a given level for 20 or more years, absent fraud. On the legislative track, Section 108 of H.R. 9237 as introduced carries its own grandfather clause: its revisions "may not serve as the basis for reducing, discontinuing, or otherwise adversely affecting compensation that was in effect on the day before the date of the enactment of this Act," and they would apply to claims filed after enactment. VA separately said in February 2022 that "No change to a Veteran's current rating would occur due to these proposed changes." What none of that protects is a new claim or an increase claim you file after a revision takes effect. And 38 CFR 3.957 protects the service connection itself, not the percentage attached to it.

Should I rush to file my VA claim before the criteria change?

Not as a strategy by itself. Filing a thin, half-documented claim to beat a rule that may never publish is a bad trade. A denial or a low evaluation built on weak evidence costs you time and hands you an unfavorable decision to work against later. What is worth doing is filing on the schedule you should have been on anyway — inside the Benefits Delivery at Discharge window, 180 to 90 days before separation, with the diagnosis and the in-service documentation already in your record. If your conditions are documented and you are inside that window, file. If they are not documented, spend the time documenting them instead of racing a proposed rule that has been sitting unfinished since February 2022.

What happens to my claim if it is still pending when new criteria take effect?

The general practice VA has followed on prior rating-schedule revisions is to consider a pending claim under both the old and the revised criteria and apply whichever is more favorable to the veteran. Treat that as a pattern rather than a guarantee — it shows up most clearly in Board of Veterans' Appeals decisions rather than in one regulation that states it in a single sentence. What is written down plainly is the effective-date half. Under 38 CFR 3.114, an increase granted because of a liberalizing change in law or regulation generally cannot be made effective earlier than the effective date of that change. So even in the favorable case, you would not collect retroactively back to your original filing date for the portion of the increase attributable to the new criteria.

What is Section 108 of H.R. 9237, and is it law?

It is not law. H.R. 9237, the Take Care of America's Veterans Act, was introduced by Rep. Mike Bost on June 10, 2026. Section 108, headed "Reforms Relating to Department of Veterans Affairs Disability Ratings," would grade sleep apnea at 0 percent when asymptomatic, 10 percent when treatment gives incomplete relief, 50 percent only when treatment is ineffective or cannot be tolerated because of a comorbid condition, and 100 percent only with end-organ damage. It would bar a separate compensable tinnitus rating except 10 percent where tinnitus is associated with service-connected hearing loss that is otherwise noncompensable. As introduced it applies to claims filed after enactment and states that its revisions "may not serve as the basis for reducing, discontinuing, or otherwise adversely affecting compensation that was in effect on the day before the date of the enactment of this Act." The House Rules Committee record shows a closed rule, H. Res. 1423, agreed to 215-211 on July 14, 2026, and a motion to recommit that failed 210-211 on July 16, 2026 (Roll Call 249), with final passage postponed. Postponed is not passed. Military.com reported on June 25, 2026 that 47 senators wrote to VA Secretary Collins opposing the changes, that 15 organizations signed a letter on June 22, 2026, and that CBO found nearly one million veterans would have their monthly compensation reduced. Those are the CBO's and the letter signers' figures, attributed to them, not our own analysis.

Does this affect my BDD claim if I am separating in the next six months?

Not in the sense of changing what you should do. The Benefits Delivery at Discharge window is still 180 to 90 days before separation, you still need a known separation date, and you still have to be available for VA exams within 45 days of submitting the claim — which is what actually constrains most people's timing. File inside the window with documented conditions. The one thing the rating-change noise should change is your urgency about documentation: make sure your Separation Health Assessment and your service treatment record actually contain the diagnosis, the in-service onset, and the treatment history, because that record is what any version of the criteria gets applied to. A sleep study on file and a CPAP prescription in your record are worth more to you than any prediction about what the Federal Register will publish.

Would the mental health rating changes make things better or worse?

On the mental disorders side, the direction of the February 2022 proposal was more generous, not less. VA's press release described a 10 percent minimum evaluation for any service-connected mental health diagnosis, and removing the requirement that a veteran show total occupational and social impairment in order to receive a 100 percent evaluation. That is the part of the package almost nobody is writing about, and it cuts the opposite way from the sleep apnea and tinnitus coverage. It is also still just a proposal — a companion proposed rule published the same day, FR doc 2022-02051 — subject to the same uncertainty about whether and in what form it ever publishes.

Final Thoughts

The pattern here is familiar to anyone who has watched a policy fight from inside the force. A proposal lands, generates alarm, stalls, and then gets reanimated four years later by a legislative vehicle and a news cycle. Meanwhile the people it would actually affect are trying to make decisions with real deadlines against a policy picture that has none.

The correct response to that is not to guess. It is to do the things whose value does not depend on the outcome.

• Get the sleep study, the audiogram, and the workup for anything undocumented. Start now, because referrals take months and your access to military medicine ends on a specific date.
• Fill out Part A of your Separation Health Assessment completely and specifically, with dates and in-service causes. Free, entirely under your control, and worth more than every headline about the rating schedule combined.
• File inside the BDD window, 180 to 90 days out, and make sure you can get to VA exams within 45 days of filing. Missed exams cost people their BDD claims every single month, and that has nothing to do with any proposed rule.
• Talk to an accredited VSO about your actual conditions and your actual record. Free, and they see the failure modes in this constantly.

There is something genuinely unfair about this, and it is worth naming rather than smoothing over. The people most affected by uncertainty about the sleep apnea and tinnitus criteria are the ones who earned those conditions the ordinary way — twenty years next to jet engines, or a decade of sleep debt that turned into apnea — and who are now being asked to make irreversible timing decisions against a rule that has been unresolved since 2022. Nobody is going to compensate you for the planning cost of that. The only thing you control is whether your record is complete when someone finally applies whatever criteria exist.

Build the record. Ignore the countdown clocks.

About the author: Bruce Goren is a retired Air Force member (Ret. Feb 2026). He went through his own separation medical process and VA claim during transition, under the criteria currently in 38 CFR Part 4 — not under any proposed revision. This post is general information, not legal, medical, or claims advice, and it is deliberately not a prediction about whether or when any proposed rule will publish. Confirm anything you plan around with an accredited VSO, your transition office, or VA directly, and check the date on whatever you are reading.