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Agent Orange Benefits to Expand in 2010
Katie Roberts, VA press secretary, said no estimates will be available on numbers of veterans impacted or the potential cost to VA until after the rule change takes effect sometime in 2010. But the National Association for Uniformed Services was told by a VA official that up to 185,000 veterans could become eligible for benefits and the projected cost to VA might reach $50 billion, said Win Reither, a retired colonel on NAUS’ executive board.
NAUS also advised members that VA, to avoid aggravating its claims backlog, intends to “accept letters from family physicians supporting claims for Agent Orange-related conditions.” It said thousands of widows whose husbands died of Agent Orange disabilities also will be eligible for retroactive benefits and VA Dependency and Indemnity Compensation.
..TOM PHILPOTT | Orange Heart Disease Ruling Could Boost VA Costs
Posted January 2, 2010 at 12:01 a.m.
.The cost of war — on veterans’ health and taxpayer wallets — will loom a little larger in the new year when the Department of Veterans Affairs issues a final rule to claim adjudicators to presume three more diseases of Vietnam veterans, including heart disease, were caused by exposure to Agent Orange.
The rule, expected to be published soon, will make almost any veteran who set foot in Vietnam, and is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, B cell leukemia or ischemic heart disease (known also as coronary artery disease), eligible for disability compensation and VA medical care. The exception would be if credible evidence surfaces of a non-service cause for the ailment.
Katie Roberts, VA press secretary, said no estimates will be available on numbers of veterans impacted or the potential cost to VA until after the rule change takes effect sometime in 2010. But the National Association for Uniformed Services was told by a VA official that up to 185,000 veterans could become eligible for benefits and the projected cost to VA might reach $50 billion, said Win Reither, a retired colonel on NAUS’ executive board.
NAUS also advised members that VA, to avoid aggravating its claims backlog, intends to “accept letters from family physicians supporting claims for Agent Orange-related conditions.” It said thousands of widows whose husbands died of Agent Orange disabilities also will be eligible for retroactive benefits and VA Dependency and Indemnity Compensation.
“This is huge,” said Ronald Abrams, co-director of the National Veterans Legal Services Program. NVLSP has represented veterans in Agent Orange lawsuits for the last 25 years. The non-profit law group publishes the “Veterans Benefits Manual,” a 1,900-page guide for veterans’ advocates to navigate the maze for VA claims, appeals and key court decisions.
Abrams said he can’t guess at how many more thousands of veterans previously denied disability claims, or how many thousands more who haven’t filed claims yet, will be eligible for benefits. But numbers, particularly of those with heart disease, will be very large, he suggested.
All of the veterans “who have been trying to link their heart condition to a service-connected condition won’t have to do it now if they’re Vietnam vets,” Abrams said. For VA, it will mean “a significant amount of money — and many, many, many people helped.”
The excitement over expansion of benefits for Vietnam veterans, and worry by some within the Obama administration over cost, flows from an announcement last October by VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki. He said three categories would be added to the list of diseases the VA presumes were caused by Agent Orange. Veterans with the presumptive Agent Orange ailments can get disability compensation if they can show they made even a brief visit to Vietnam from 1962 to 1975. With a presumptive illness, claim applicants don’t have to prove, as other claimants do, a direct association between their medical condition and military service.
Shinseki said he based his decision on work of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies. VA contracts with IOM to gather veterans’ health data and investigate links between diseases and toxic herbicide used in Vietnam to destroy vegetation and expose enemy positions.
In a speech last July, Shinseki, former Army chief of staff and a wounded veteran of Vietnam, expressed frustration that “40 years after Agent Orange was last used in Vietnam, this secretary is still adjudicating claims for presumption of service-connected disabilities tied to its toxic effects.” VA and the Defense Department should had conducted conclusive studies earlier on presumptive disabilities from Agent Orange, he suggested.
“The scientific method and the failure to advocate for the veteran got in the way of our processes,” Shinseki bluntly concluded.
In last October’s announcement he said VA “must do better reviews of illnesses that may be connected to service, and we will. Veterans who endure health problems deserve timely decisions based on solid evidence.”
When a disease is added to VA’s list of ailments tied to Agent Orange, veterans with the disease can become eligible for retroactive disability payments, back to the date original claims were rejected, if after 1985.
Joe Violante, legislative director for Disabled American Veterans, praised Shinseki’s decision. But he said VA faces a “logistical nightmare” in trying to find veterans turned down on earlier on claims. A VA official told Violante, he said, that cost of the search could be part of that nightmare.
Chairman of government affairs for Vietnam Veterans of America until last October was John Miterko. He said he wasn’t surprised that Shinseki added ailments to the Agent Orange presumptive list including heart disease.
“If you look at the Vietnam veteran population, the diseases we’ve contracted and the mortality rate, the only group dying faster rate are the World War II veterans,” Miterko said. “We’re picking up diseases by our 60s that we shouldn’t be getting until our late 70s, early 80s. So his adding other diseases, heart disease in particular, isn’t a surprise.”
Both Shinseki and his predecessor, James Peake, former Army surgeon general, had long military careers and served in Vietnam. “That’s a hell of a bonus for us,” Miterko said. Both of them have shown “much more empathy, much more understanding. They would have seen many of their own peer group suffering from the effects of exposure to Agent Orange.”
Miterko doesn’t believe anyone can estimate how many veterans will benefit from the new presumptive diseases. VA will continue to process claims individually, he said, and likely won’t be accepting Agent Orange as the cause of heart disease for someone “who has smoked for 40 years and is morbidly obese. Common sense is going to have to prevail as well.”
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Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=9984
Posted by Denise Nichols on Jan 2 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Better late than never, but oh what a cost in lives!!!
My case is 14 years and 4 months old. I’ll believe it when I see that I have won my case.
Why do they continue to ignor Stateside exposure?
Hi Bigjohn
I’m a Canadian and was living in Canadian Forces Base Gagetown, New Brunswick, from 1956 until 1964 while our military sprayed Agent Orange and Purple sometimes just blocks from our house.
You may have heard that the U.S. Army was invited to spray Agent Orange on CFB Gagetown in 1966 and 1967. Did you know this Canadian spraying was connected to the testing of Agent Orange in several Stateside bases and in Thailand and Puerto Rico? They were all part of the same package. In 1961 Robert McNamara ordered the creation of a manual called Information Manual for Vegetation Control in Southeast Asia and it names all the places. Personnel from Fort Detrick and ARPA field tested in Thailand, two places each in Puerto Rico and Hawaii, New Brunswick, Florida, Georgia and Arkansas. These nine places are related because they were selected early in the 60′s, were all sprayed at roughly the same time (except for Thailand) and were all selected to appear in this manual about defoliating Vietnam.
There were other locations sprayed Stateside of course but the eight North American sites listed above all constitute a sort of “club” that is unique. We should all get together and have these locations declared presumptive zones just like Vietnam.
If you’d like me to email you a PDF copy of the manual, write me at:
Kelly_franklin@telus.net
What about our children who are showing the same effects of Agent Orange as their Veteran parents. Their lives were effected also.
I was told fathers can not pass down the exposure of Agent Orange to there children but it sure is strange how my daughter gets this awful & painful rash on her hands 3 to 4 times a year every sense birth, doctors say it is normal rash (I say RIGHT sense birth.) she is 16 now
My husband has the same rash. We have now taken pics on his hands. Our sons has the same rash. It sure is strange how other viet nam vets have simaliar symptoms.
We have a son who has had over the years strange symptoms… pancreatitis, huge purple spots, rashes… my husband served at Da Nang and Bien Hoa.
My wife (American daughter of Air America pilot) was exposed to Agent Orange or something similar when living near Bien Hoa and she reported a large splotchy purple rash that suddenly appeared and lasted about six months. Doctors had no explanation for it except that it looked like a chemical burn. She was perhaps 10-12 years old at the time. To this day she believes she has suffered from strange health problems as a result including thyroid damage. Her two sisters did not have this problem because she routinely traveled with her father to the base where he worked and spent time with him there while they did not. The military was spraying constantly around the base to reduce the foliage and also stored the Agent Orange near the water supply, and often would dump it out where it could mix with the water. She drank water from the base routinely, her sisters did not, and she got the symptoms, they did not.
She also developed a very severe case of acne immediately afterward that lasted for several years. Her daughter to this day has the same problem, and no one else in the family has ever experienced anything like it. Something genetic changed and was passed on to her daughter. Her daughter also suffers from seizures.
There are perhaps thousands of families like her’s who were brought over by Air America pilots at their own expense and exposed to all the same environmental hazards, and yet they will never be known or acknowledged and will suffer the rest of their lives because of it.
When are they going to remember those of us who were not boots on ground but literally in the waters off shore on rescue missions? We were in brown water. Although I have diabetes, neuropothy and other related AO problems, we are denied of even being considered. Are they just waiting for us to just die out?
My father died of polyneuropothy(ALS) in Dec. 2007, I am sorry 4 what u r going thru. I am trying to get help in finding a lawyer who has the guts to go against the Gov. and help my family.
my husband had his first heart attack in 91 folling a blood clot .
his has also had a second blood clot in his lung and one to burst in his back and did ireversible damage to his back and legs.
and now he has been in kidney failure for 4 years .in disalies .
he also now has copd lung disease .
no one in his famiely before him had kidney problems.
he filed for all three diseases and was denied all clamis of course.
so lets pray they will finally get what they derserve’
his blood is also thick and causes it to clot .
he was in vietnam for 13 month.
It was published fact that Vietnam Combat soldiers had the most
and worst PTSD among war veterans across the board…These warriors
our government talks about also says with statictics that most Vietnam combat veterans were the heaviest smokers of all war veterans….and ofcorse these same
veterans exposed to Agent Orange Dioxin poison has ans is still suffering most
of all war veterans….yet even after 40 years or more after being exposed to Dioxin and adding new diseases to the list of Agent orange diseases..Mr Phillpot writes in his column that warrios of vietnam combat who smoked and put on weight
do to age and medications of illnesses tied to Dioxin poison my not get compensated..Well the VA says that staistic say vietnam combat soldiers did smoke
cigarettes in war and out of war but still were also exposed to agent orange
dioxin poison as well…but heres what Mr Phillpot wont tell you…..and that is that before most vietnam veterans smoked the C_RATION cigarettes issued to them in the C-Ration cartons with food cans while fighting the enemy in the hills and vallies of south vietnam they were being constantly exposed to agent orange
dioxin and agent blue and other poison agents as well.It seems onlu just and
lawful that the government should be accountable to these warriors now after 40
plus years of suffering with sprayed poisonous agents in those jungles,that they the government admit that the handed us two types of poisons that of cigarettes while in combat and dioxin poison while in combat..and so it should not be that
the adjudicators for earned service connected compensation may deny benefits but to the contrary the adjudicators should pay compensation to veterans for being issued c-ration cigaretts with being warned that they were in fact being poisoned with dioxin from agent orange and that ration cigarettes would harm your future entitlement to service connection for agent orange poisoning when it ever
becomes service connected disease LAW……to SUM up this article you must be
aware and understand that the federal government is responsible for giving Warriors of the Vietnam campaign who served in combat with honor 2 poison cocktails that did in fact cause long term diseases and many deaths to date,those poisons were in fact Agent Orange Dioxin and C- Ration Cigarettes dated 1942.
The Verterans Adminisration in all honesty should pay compensation to the living
suffuring veterans both forthe effects of long term dioxin poisoning ang c-ration cigarett effects as well….and in the future i would recommend that the ARMY not
issue or even sell cigaretts or any substance that may harm in any way or most
honered and devoted combat warriors who sacrifice for the freedom and equality
that is the foundation of our American Constitution…How will it look to the world that we americams under the leadership of our commander in chief President
Barrack Obama…via the veterans administration begin to deny earned benefits to our best warriors we depended on in time of war yet now we would even think of saving money by denying there earned benefits simlpy saying they all smoked c-ration cigaerrets and became addiced? Let the record stand that most Veterans
are smokers from the war and PTSD effects and so what mr phillpot is pointing to ,is that all those veterans who recieved earned service connected compensations of up to 100 % and in many cases recieved RETROACTIVE huge
payments they earned ,should return all those years of financial compensations
because they smaoked cigarettes issues by the government.? Why condem only
suffering Vietnam Veterans ,the system should condem all veterans who ever smoked but was awarded full compensations anyway ..It bothers me that journalists only pick on Vietnam Veteran warriors to deny earned benefits but not all veterans of all wars….and i have news for you….veterans have smoked cigarettes as far baco as the civil war and earlier…did we deny any of there benefits …i think not…please dont hurt our warriors any further ,believe me these combat fighting men are struggling to survive many ailments after ocer 40 years and what they
realy need now is fairness,understanding,compassion…and a sense of worth and not to be made to feel helpless and hopeless….give vietnam combat vets something
better to look forward to as they age so quikly…after all they did sacrifice so much to fight for the freedom that those who examin them and adjudicate their
benefits have enjoyed those freedoms.
There is no doubt that government, military and the chemical industries CEO’s would rather be talking about just about anything then the amount of soldiers and civilian deaths and causalities created by these weapons of mass defoliation and their decisions to create, manufacture and then use these toxic chemicals.
A few things bother me;
(1) First is why no one ever talks about Agent White and the Hexachlorobenzene (HCB) which it contained? Could it be because HCB destroys the Auto Immune System, so just about every medical condition including flues, all cancers and maybe even the common cold could be linked to the chemical spraying done.
(2) Why has, Forbes Magazine, This week, named Monsanto its company of the year? Hasn’t Monsanto done enough carnage to the people of the world on its own without the help of Forbes? I know that Forbes is a capitalist magazine – but even they have some responsibility to the citizens of the world. Nominating Monsanto is bad enough but then to go one step further and actually approving Monsanto as business of the year, in my opinion places Forbes as a co-conspirator in the thousands of deaths that, if history serves us correctly, are yet to come.
(3) There is also talk that the US Military/government will try to use the Canadian Governments defense for using the very same chemicals in Gagetown and claim, “That the chemicals were registered for use in their own country and so they are not responsible for damages done. ” But who registered these dangerous and toxic chemicals in the first place? Who’s incorrect, incomplete or maybe even fraudulent documentation allowed our governments to register them?
That is just a few of the many things bothering me.
Cpl. Kenneth H. Young CD (ret)
All that can be said now is that Vietanm Veterans and Agent Orange was recently
the main reason why President Obama says he signed billions of dollars into VA
hands to take care of our warriors .Combat veterans have taken care of the politics
of freedom and keeping America free and so after over 40 years of neglecting our
vietnam warriors ,it is time to now take care of these honerable war veterans who earned service connected entitlements….I believe proper restitution under LAW will finally show honesty and integrity with our jurisprudence system.
My Dad was in Vietnam for 13 months. He now has renal disease and is at the point where he has to choose to start dialysis or not. He also has lymphoma, but b/c in remission he was told in 2005 that he did not qualify for VA. He has terrible gout and can not use his hands or walk on his own. My Mom recently re-applied for VA and was told that lymphoma was the only way he could qualify; but, b/c in remission, he did not. My Mom doesn’t know what else to do and I am trying to find any info I can to appeal. I have even noticed that people are questioning if epilepsy in children of veterans could be caused by Agent Orange. I have had seizures for 24 years. If anyone has any suggestions on where I could get help I would love to hear them.
I was stationed at Gitmo, Puerto Rico and Phillipines in the early and mid 70′. I know for sure that they (feds) were using 5 to 6 different herbicides testing in PR.. I WILL NOT EVEN BEGAN TO MENTION PHILLIPINES BASES CONTAMINATION GALORE….When will we get our compensation for being used as test rats.
Hello All,
I need any help I can get! My father died in Dec. 2007 of what he had been suffering with since 1988, polyneuropathy. He started out using a cane, then hand brace canes(one for each arm), then a walker, next a wheelchair lastly he was confined to the bed for the last two months or so. On his death cert. cause of death was stated at ALS(Lou Gehrig’s Disease). This cause was news to us, we always thought he had it but his doctor never agreed. Myself and my two siblings suffer with serious depression and one has mental illness, my sister has sarcoidoisis and I have diabetes. I need help in proving that all of our problems are related to Agent Orange Exposure that my father went through and I need for my mother to receive the benefits that she is owed. Please email me sigmalove78@hotmail.com. Thank you and God Bless us all.
About a year ago, I was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer. Right now I am being treated at the Radiation Therapy clinic. At this clinic I met a Vet who said go ahead and file a disability claim on my cancer. I did.
But someone else told that to be eligible you have to set foot on ground in Vietnam. I did. From Hickam AFB Hawaii I boarded a Military C1-35 aircraft for my flight to Thailand with stopover at Tansanut airport Saigon.
I have also sent a VA for to the Military Personnel Archive center in St.Louis Missouri requesting a copy of my travel voucher. I’m sure I filled one out when I arrived at Korat AFB Thailand. This travel voucher is my only evidence that I did step on ground in Vietnam. If they can’t find one, than I am out of luck to collect my disability for this dreadful disease – Cancer.\\
I’ved search the internet to see if Korat had any agent orange at all stored. I read articles about Korat Thailand and possible agent orange. But I haven’t seen any news from the VA that would add Thailand for this disease.