The VA: Fucking Vietnam vets yet once again

Shinseki Stopped Hearing on AO Decision
Tom Philpott | June 10, 2010

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki met with Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, last month to ask that he cancel a hearing on the secretary's controversial decision to add three diseases to the list of Vietnam veteran illnesses presumed caused by exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides used in that war.

Akaka reluctantly agreed, an informed source told Military Update. The VA thus avoided a brighter public spotlight, so far, on a decision that will help tens of thousands of veterans but also will add $13.6 billion to VA compensation claims in a single year.

Akaka and Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), a committee member, are pressing Shinseki outside of the hearing process to explain last October's decision to add heart disease, Parkinson's disease and B-cell leukemia to the list of illnesses presumed caused by Agent Orange.

Several weeks after their meeting, Akaka followed up on a March letter to Shinseki with a new one, this one asking the secretary for more details on the consequences of presuming service-connection for ischemic heart disease to any veteran who can show he stepped foot in Vietnam.

Katie Roberts, Shinseki's press secretary, had no comment on whether the private meeting occurred. She did note in an e-mail that "VA's primary mission is to be an advocate for veterans of all eras" and that "veterans who endure health problems as a result of their service deserve better."




unhappycamper comment: Come on Shinseki, you're better than this.

I spent a year as a patient in an Army hospital-service connected-and my doctor at the time told me I should expect to have back trouble later in life. It started about 10 years later, and I still have it occasionally. The VA where I went for treatment in the 1980's first gave me some huge tylenols with codine, then refused to treat me again stating they could find no evidence that the back pain was related to my injury in the Army. They said my files were lost in that famous fire that evidently consumed so many records of soldiers who had some medical problems in the service...
Saves the VA a lot of money if they don't treat anybody...


mark

No records after 1964 were lost, for one thing. If your records were actually lost, you may be able to reconstruct them, or parts of them, from other records.

If you dropped it when you were first told there was no evidence to support your claim, it's worth filing a formal claim with the help of a VSO (Veterans Service Organization--DAV, VVA, VFW, Legion, etc.). If you ask around and find a good rep, they'll do the work of searching for your records. (Note: You don't have to be member of the organization, or even eligible for membership, to get help.)

It's possible that your records still exist, and can back up your claim for VA health care. Here's what was lost in the fire (it's from wiki, but it's accurate):


The losses to Federal military records collection included:

80% loss to records of U.S. Army personnel discharged November 1, 1912, to January 1, 1960<2>

75% loss to records of U.S. Air Force personnel discharged September 25, 1947, to January 1, 1964, with names alphabetically after Hubbard, James E.<2>

Some U.S. Army Reserve personnel who performed their initial active duty for training in the late 1950s but who received final discharge as late as 1964.

None of the records that were destroyed in the fire had duplicate copies made, nor had they been copied to microfilm. No index of these records was made prior to the fire, and millions of records were on loan to the Veterans Administration at the time of the fire. This made it difficult to precisely determine which records were lost.<2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Personnel_Records_Center_fire#Affected_records

I do get medication for it (muscle relaxers) under my insurance....and I sure do NOT want surgery, but it is good to know about those groups. I was a Legion member but did not keep it up...

mark

Is there a real commitment to veterans or were those just words? :shrug:

Damn it.

if there are any. (If they just want to do oversight, it is not bad.)


VA Secretary Eric Shinseki met with Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, last month to ask that he cancel a hearing on the secretary's controversial decision to add three diseases to the list of Vietnam veteran illnesses presumed caused by exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides used in that war.

Akaka reluctantly agreed, an informed source told Military Update. The VA thus avoided a brighter public spotlight, so far, on a decision that will help tens of thousands of veterans but also will add $13.6 billion to VA compensation claims in a single year.

Akaka and Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), a committee member, are pressing Shinseki outside of the hearing process to explain last October's decision to add heart disease, Parkinson's disease and B-cell leukemia to the list of illnesses presumed caused by Agent Orange.
<snip>
VA issued an interim regulation in March for implementing Shinseki's decision, even cutting the 60-day comment period in half. However, because of the large cost involved, Webb in late May attached an amendment to a war supplemental bill to prevent claims under the newly presumptive diseases from being paid until 60 days after a final regulation is published.