UPDATE: Doug Collins HALTS this interim rule for now.

I thought I'd share this since it is receiving surprising very little to no coverage by the mainstream media.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Douglas Collins recently enacted an interim final rule despite how it was done as seemingly out of nowhere, and the massive impact it will have on the veteran community.

This new regulation effective 2/17/2026 represents a direct administrative maneuver to IGNORE a 2025 Ingram v. Collins decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, which had reaffirmed a long-standing legal principle that veterans should be rated based on their underlying disability severity. While the court in Ingram—and previously in Jones v. Shinseki—ruled that the VA must "discount" the temporary relief provided by medication to find a veteran's true baseline of impairment, this new rule explicitly mandates that examiners evaluate only a veteran's "medicated state." This basically reaffirmed a prior court ruling so this shouldn't have changed anything. And specifically, this case dealt with muscular skeletal issues that are done a bit differently than other disabilities.

(See: YouTube channel, Rater HQ: After Dark from a VA raters explanation and POV). In short he states, "it does not change how the process has been functioning for years." But the memorandum from the VA and final rule points out how this could* apply to other disability ratings.)

However, the VA’s own Regulatory Impact Analysis reveals a highly controversial motive: the agency is prioritizing administrative convenience and massive financial "cost avoidance" over the welfare of those who served. Internal data shows this rule is designed to withhold an estimated $1.9 billion in benefits in 2026 alone, with "savings" projected to reach a staggering $23.2 billion over the next decade. By forcing evaluations to be based on a treated functional level, the VA is effectively penalizing veterans for managing their service-connected pain while blocking the 350,000 pending claims that would have been eligible for higher ratings under the Ingram precedent. This action essentially allows the administration to bypass the judicial system to protect its bottom line at the direct expense of the veteran community.

I have the letter and another document with some of this information. Crazy. There are some commentary on YouTube from veterans, law firms, and some discussions on veterans forums on Reddit. And since I originally posted this, it looks like more have responded publicly.