VA "SKIPS" TELLING QUALIFIED DISABLED VETS OF ENTITLEMENTS

THAT'S RIGHT. According to the VA's own Inspector General Report released yesterday, VA claims adjudicators don't bother telling seriously ill...sometimes terminally ill...veterans of entitlement to the extremely valuable benefit called "special monthly compensation," or SMC When the IG asked why, they were told "Because we don't have to." Isn't that clever? Imagine the money VA saves by establishing a program with help from Congress, and then doesn't bother with delivery to qualified vets. Perhaps VA feels if vets didn't ask about SMC, they don't deserve it, even in cases with terminal illnesses like ALS.

SMC is an extremely complicated program poorly understood even by VA's own claims staff. They have to use a "SMC Calculator" to figure it out. SMC is meant for the more seriously disabled veterans whose illnesses or injuries go beyond the 100% total disability rate, and SMC is paid rather than the regular monthly stipend. This is vital assistance, and SMC addresses challenging situations where vets are homebound, blind, lost use of extremities, confined to bed, severe TBI, require home medical care and similar cases. You don't want to be so disabled as to qualify, but if you do, SMC helps deal with such staggering problems.

SMC-S is for homebound totally disabled veterans, and currently pays $3228, or $255 more than the base 100% compensation. The program can compensate the most seriously disabled veterans as much as $8510 per month, with a couple thousand eligible.

You can easily imagine the importance of SMC to those so disabled as to qualify. That leads to the question the IG raised when checking into how victims of ALS are treated. The answer was a horrid one...VA claims folks don't bother telling vets with this terminal illness. Citing a narrow interpretation of a case that reached the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, VA says they just don't have to, and it is on the veteran, not VA, to find out about SMC.

Lesson learned? If you have a serious disability, very carefully read up on special monthly compensation, and get help from a veterans service organization like the DAV or VFW to get your paperwork done right.

I still wonder how VA's VA M21-1MR rulebook can state that SMC is an implied claim in every disability claim, and yet not review SMC approval or denial in so many decisions.

Springfield (MA) The Republican: Major C-123 News Article by Reporter Jeanette DeForge

Today's The Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts) carries a major article addressing the C-123 exposure situation and VA's tepid reaction to the definitive Institute of Medicine report issued on January 9, 2015.

The Republican, and reporter Jeanette DeForge, have carried news about this situation for four years, since C-123 veterans first filed a formal Inspector General complaint through the United States Air Force. That IG complaint was denied, as were all the veterans' complaints and requests for inquiries with the Department of Veterans Affairs, between 2011 and 2015.

But The Republican carried the story. The Republican saw the kernel of truth, and story after story, editorial after editorial, Deforge revealed the details of an intricate legal, historical, aeronautical, military and medical puzzle the veterans from Westover AFB, Rickenbacker ANGB and Pittsburgh IAP found themselves struggling through.

DeForge is due our thanks...not for her favoritism or special treatment, but because she and her publisher faithfully played their roles in fulfilling the Constitution's expectations of journalists, in its First Amendment guarantees of freedom of the press.

Thank God for that freedom, for The Republican, and for Jeanette DeForge.  They make wearing our flight suits for these past decades worth it all.

AGENT ORANGE
• Westover Reservists exposed to Agent Orange, federal officials rule after 4-year battle
• Support grows for Westover veterans who served in planes contaminated by Agent Orange, but VA scandal stymies efforts
• Editorial: U.S. government needs to own responsibility for Agent Orange exposure at Westover as it does for radiation exposure at Chapman Valve
• Editorial: U.S. government's treatment unconscionable of Westover veterans exposed to Agent Orange
• Westover Air Reserve veterans exposed to Agent Orange file complaint with Department of Defense

U.S. Government's Unconscionable Treatment of Westover's Agent Orange Exposed Veterans – Springfield REPUBLICAN Editorial

By The Republican Editorials 
on May 16, 2014 at 3:00 PM, updated May 16, 2014 at 4:18 PM

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When retired Major Wesley T. Carter began to experience major illnesses, he wondered why. He started to investigate.

Carter served as an air medical technician and flight instructor and examiner with Westover’s 74th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron during and after the Vietnam War.
Through his research, Carter learned that he was not the only one experiencing serious illness. There were 48 others.

Freedom of Information requests helped Carter discover the cause: Dioxin, the toxic ingredient in Agent Orange, was to blame. The C-123 Provider planes had been used in Vietnam where the lethal chemical weapon was sprayed.

Carter's request yielded 15 years of memos, safety reports and complaints from private companies and military workers. In 2000, the government canceled sales of the planes because they were contaminated, and in 2010, the remaining 18 were shredded and smelted to satisfy Environmental Protection Agency regulations.

"Some of the most compelling documents," writes Jeanette DeForge for The Republican and MassLive.com, "revealed 11 of the 16 planes from Westover tested positive for dioxin when they were examined from 1994 and 1996 – more than a decade after they were retired. One Westover C-123 was labeled 'highly-contaminated.'”

Now, Carter and other veterans experiencing similar illnesses, have filed an official complaint with the Department of Defense saying they have been improperly denied medical and disability benefits related to their exposure to the carcinogen.

While veterans who served in Vietnam are automatically granted full medical coverage, these veterans have been continually denied benefits.

“Our military and civilian scientific documentation establishes the dioxin contamination of at least 34 C-123s, all destroyed by the USAF (United States Air Force) as toxic waste, should retrospectively be designated Agent Orange Exposure sites,” Carter wrote in his complaint.

If not for Carter's request, the hidden pieces of this sickening puzzle might never have been put together.

Why the Department of Veterans Services continues to deny the truth of these veterans -- an unintended but life-threatening cost of the Vietnam War -- is unconscionable.

The veterans are now paying for their service with their health and their lives. The least the U.S. Department of Veterans Services can do is provide them with medical and disability benefits.

DOD Inspector General Complaint filed by C-123 Veterans Association

Today the C-123 Veterans Association filed an official complaint via the Department of Defense Inspector General Hotline, asserting failure of DOD officials to designate Agent Orange-contaminated C-123 aircraft as "Agent Orange Exposure Sites," on a list maintained by the Department of Defense.

Because the presence (or absence) of sites on the Agent Orange Exposure Site List guides VA in approving or denying veterans' exposure claims, failure by DOD to place these toxic Agent Orange spray aircraft has endangered the health of veterans. VA cites the absence of these Vietnam War Agent Orange-spray aircraft as proof against veterans' claims.

This is unscientific and illogical. The contamination of the aircraft was established

by the Air Force itself over decades of testing. More current analysis of those tests led the CDC/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the NIH/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the US Public Health Service to inform the VA that the aircraft were contaminated with deadly dioxin, and the veterans exposed.

Most telling was the analysis by Dr. Tom Sinks, Deputy Director of the CDC/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry who concluded that the veterans were indeed exposed, and have a 200-fold greater cancer risk.

C-123 veterans have sought VA care for their Agent Orange illnesses for years, without success. VA even has denied C-123 veterans' exposure benefits, insisting that the toxin in Agent Orange is harmless. This is a wrong which veterans call on DOD to remedy.

VA Veterans Health Administration: Gaming The Wait Lists Via Claims Process

VA Health Benefits Administration

The VA has two key agencies gaming the system against veterans' health.

These are the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) which decides disability claims, and Veterans Health Administration (VHA) providing the veterans health care and research. They're working together to keep their waiting lists, and costs, within management's goals.

We report on the prevention of claims by linguistic slight-of-hand: VA prevents exposure claims by redefining exposure to keep veterans from being considered exposed. A simple solution. VA invented for its own use a special definition of exposure, unique in medicine and science:
"Exposure = contamination field + bioavailability."

That redefinition works great. Using it, VA denies every exposure claim crossing their desk for Agent Orange, burn pits, radiation, dirty water, biohazards, toxins, immunizations...everything except situations where VA is compelled by law to provide care. No law=no exposure, regardless of proofs of exposure.

Legislation such as the 1991 Agent Orange Act protects veterans of the Vietnam War with "boots on the ground." That law, and various court decisions and announcements in the Federal Register also require VA to provide care to veterans exposed to Agent Orange outside Vietnam.

So, VA pretends it has the scientific and legal authority, and boldly redefines exposure to pretend no exposures take place. In the case of C-123 veterans, who flew the Agent Orange spray airplanes for a decade after Vietnam, the aircraft tested positive for Agent Orange residue many, many times up until their destruction as toxic waste in 2010. Too toxic for landfill, and the Air Force concerned about a threatened EPA HAZMAT fine of $3.4 billion for illegal storage, all C-123s were shredded and smelted as toxic waste, upon recommendation of the consultant to the Office of Secretary of Defense.

That same consultant then was retained by VA to construct arguments against the veterans' claims, and developed arguments that the veterans' dermal contact, inhalation and ingestion of the military herbicide residue did not constitute exposure, utilizing the VA's unique redefinition. His VA work continues decades of defending Agent Orange and its harmful effects.

This redefinition, and the decision against awarding C-123 veterans exposure benefits, is challenged by many universities as well as other federal agencies. The CDC/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the US Public Health Service, and the NIH/National Toxicology Program have all informed VA that tests prove the aircraft contamination and the veterans' exposure.

All input contrary to the VA's objective of preventing C-123 veterans' service connection is disregarded, explained away or simply ignored as with the input to VA from the Director, NIH/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences who wrote, "Based on contact with the aircraft, exposure is assumed...the magnitude of these exposures is uncertain."

The VHA informs the Veterans Benefits Administration that none of the C-123 veterans were ever exposed, and therefore have no basis for exposure claims. In fact, VHA officials also insist that under their new exposure definition none of the ground soldiers during the Vietnam War were ever exposed, and perhaps only a few of the Air Force crews which sprayed from their C-123s. This directive flies in the face of Secretary Shinseki's repeated assurance to the Senate that all C-123 veterans' claims are considered on a "case by case basis," an obvious misstatement when VA has predetermined all the vets to be disqualified...thanks to that nifty redefinition of exposure from VA's Post Deployment Health Section.

"Unscientific" and "reflects a lack of understanding" are the judgements of leaders in the science of toxicology. But the claims remain denied, with vets told to get in line for appeals taking three to five years.

There, justice may await, but often only for the veterans' survivors. Complaints to the VA's National Center for Ethics in Healthcare resulted in recommendation that veterans turn to the VA IG because of the criminal and ethical implications of preventing medical care to eligible veterans. There, the issue has been ignored for years with inaction.