Almost three weeks ago, the House and Senate veterans affairs committees quietly allowed a provision of the Agent Orange Act of 1991 to expire.
How significant that will be for Vietnam veterans and their benefits is disputed.
Committee staff and the Department of Veterans Affairs agree
the change has not impacted the VA secretary’s authority to decide to
expand the list of diseases presumed connected to wartime herbicide
exposure.
But veteran advocates and at least one lawmaker suggest the
change is intended to dampen VA cost risks and perhaps ease political
pressure on the secretary and Congress facing a potential tsunami of
disability claims.
That scenario assumes that a final review of medical science
will establish a stronger link between Agent Orange and hypertension
(high blood pressure), a condition that the Center for Disease Control
says is so common it afflicts a third of the U.S. adult population.
VA asked Congress to keep the Agent Orange law intact five
more years. Rep. Timothy J. Walz, D-Minnesota, a VA committee member,
offered a compromise, a bill to leave the law unchanged for two years,
long enough so its secretarial review requirements held during VA
consideration of a final report of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of
the National Academy of Sciences on health conditions associated with
Agent Orange.
The VA committees declined to back these delays because,
said a House committee staff member, under separate law “the secretary
already has authority to make such (presumption) decisions, and we felt
he did not need to be compelled by (the Agent Orange) law to do so.”
The provision that “sunset” Oct. 1 required the secretary to
adhere to certain standards and procedures in determining if additional
diseases associated with herbicide exposure should be presumed service
connected. Vietnam War veterans diagnosed with ailments on the
presumptive list qualify for VA disability pay and medical care. 
No comments:
Post a Comment