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White House Delaying Healthcare for Vietnam Veterans Exposed to Agent Orange
The Trump administration is stonewalling Vietnam veterans from receiving the benefits they need to help manage illnesses associated with Agent Orange exposure.
Two years ago, then Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin decided to add three health conditions to the list of diseases eligible for Agent Orange benefits, but White House officials challenged his authority and impeded enactment.... Now tens of thousands of veterans are still waiting.
Shulkin decided to add three health conditions — bladder cancer, Parkinson’s-like symptoms and hypothyroidism — to the list of diseases eligible for Agent Orange benefits.... a move that would have given ailing veterans faster access to disability compensation and health benefits.
But the Office of Management and Budget, including Director Mick Mulvaney, and other White House officials objected....
It seems clear from the evidence presented that Republicans leading our Executive Branch stopped this because of money.
While the specifics of OMB’s opposition were redacted, legible portions show that that the office... had concerns about the budgetary impact of the expansion, as well as any adverse effects on the existing disability benefits program.... roughly 83,000 veterans are afflicted with one of the three proposed presumptive conditions. The estimated cost for providing disability compensation to these former service members was redacted.
“The VA seems to drag their feet on these types of issues in hopes we'll all die out before they make a decision,” retired Army Sgt. Major John Mennitto wrote Military Times.
“I was in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969 and now have bladder cancer. The VA doesn’t want to hear about it,” said Hawthorne, California, resident and Navy veteran John Murray, who repaired river patrol boats in Vinh Long.