02/18/2026
On February 17, 2026, the VA published an interim final rule amending 38 CFR 4.10.
The rule mandates that disability ratings be based on a veteran’s actual functional impairment as medicated, rather than the severity of the underlying condition without treatment. If medication or treatment lowers the level of disability, the rating will reflect that lowered level. The VA bypassed the standard notice-and-comment rulemaking process, making the rule effective immediately upon publication.
This directly overrides the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims’ decision in Ingram v.
Collins (2025), which held that the ameliorative effects of medication should be discounted when rating disabilities under diagnostic codes that do not explicitly reference medication as a rating criterion.
