There's a bill moving through Congress right now that manages to be the best news in years for one group of veterans and alarming news for another, in the same document. If you've seen the arguments flying around veteran spaces this summer, this is the fight behind them. Here's what the bill actually does, where it stands, and what it means for your claim, without the spin from either side.
The good half: the Major Richard Star Act
Start with the part almost everyone supports. Under current law, most veterans medically retired with fewer than 20 years of service can't collect their full DoD retirement pay and their VA disability compensation at the same time; one offsets the other, dollar for dollar. The Major Richard Star Act would end that offset for combat-related medical retirees, letting roughly 59,000 Chapter 61 retirees receive both in full. For a veteran
medically retired after a combat injury, that's real monthly money, and the fix has had broad bipartisan support for years.
What it hasn't had is funding. The price tag runs around $10 billion, and the bill has stalled repeatedly over how to pay for it. That's where the second half comes in.
The offset: tinnitus and sleep apnea
In June 2026, the Senate introduced S. 4744, the Take Care of America's Veterans Act, a package bundling more than 60 veterans bills, the Star Act among them. To cover the cost, the package includes a provision that would write into law a version of a rating change the VA first floated in 2022 and never finalized:
Sleep apnea would lose its current standalone rating structure, under which a CPAP prescription has meant a stable 50% rating. Ratings would instead run on a 0 to 100 scale based on how well treatment works. Sleep apnea that's effectively managed by a CPAP could rate at 0% or 10%, a difference worth roughly a thousand dollars a month against today's 50%.
Tinnitus would lose its standalone 10% rating entirely and be treated as a symptom of an underlying condition, compensable only when bundled into something like hearing loss or TBI. Tinnitus is currently the single most common service-connected condition in the system, with millions of veterans rated for it.
The projected savings run as high as $57 billion over ten years. Estimates of who'd feel it range from about 1 million veterans (the Congressional Budget Office's figure for reduced compensation) to 1.5 million future claimants under broader readings. Critically, the changes as proposed would apply to new claims and to reevaluations of existing ones, which is where much of the disagreement about "cuts" versus "no cuts" comes from.
What each side says
Being straight about this: the bill's supporters and opponents describe it in almost unrecognizably different terms, and both sides have a point.
Supporters, led by the House Veterans Affairs Committee chairman, say nothing in the bill cuts anyone's existing check, that the rating criteria came from VA medical staff across two administrations, and that the schedule should reflect current medicine, where a treated condition impairs less than an untreated one.
Opponents, including 47 senators who signed a letter to the VA Secretary and a broad front of veterans organizations (VFW, DAV, IAVA, and others), argue it punishes veterans for complying with treatment, sets a precedent that any condition can become a budget offset, and funds one group of veterans by cutting compensation paths for another. Several have argued the Star Act should be funded from the defense budget instead, and passed clean.
The VA itself has said no changes to the 2022 proposed rule are planned or imminent on the regulatory side. The action right now is legislative.
What's actually true for your claim today
Nothing has passed. As of this writing, the bill hasn't cleared either chamber, the tinnitus and sleep apnea provisions face organized opposition, and packages like this get rewritten before final votes. Nobody's rating has changed because of it.
Your existing rating has real protections regardless. Long-held ratings carry legal shields against reduction, and
proposed reductions have their own process and deadlines that don't disappear because a statute changes rating criteria for new claims.
But the direction of travel matters if you have an unfiled claim. Rating-schedule changes generally apply prospectively, which means claims decided under today's criteria are decided under today's criteria. If you have documented sleep apnea or tinnitus connected to your service and you've been sitting on the claim, the difference between filing under the current schedule and a future one could be substantial. Your
effective date is set by when you file, not by when Congress finishes arguing.
And if this passes and reevaluations begin, documentation will decide everything. A sleep apnea rating built on "the CPAP works fine" reads very differently from one built on a record showing residual fatigue, interrupted use, and real-world impairment. That's a fight about evidence, and it's winnable or losable long before any board sees it.
The bigger thing to watch
Whatever happens to this bill, the precedent question is the one that outlasts it: whether rating criteria for specific conditions become a recurring funding source for other priorities. That's why organizations that support the Star Act itself are opposing the package that carries it. Veterans on every side of this debate have the same practical interest: knowing exactly what their rating rests on, and having the record to defend it.
Where we come in
We're a veteran-led firm, and we don't do politics; we do ratings, appeals, and reductions. If this bill or anything like it becomes law, the work will be the same as it's always been: making the record show what a veteran actually lives with. If you're holding an unfiled sleep apnea or tinnitus claim, facing a reevaluation, or watching a rating you depend on get discussed like a line item,
reach out and we'll tell you where you actually stand.
