Veterans exposed to burn pits continue to battle to get health care through the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Both the Senate and House Committees on Veterans’ Affairs recently unveiled legislation to provide comprehensive health care and disability benefits for veterans of all generations exposed to toxic substances, including burn pits and Agent Orange.
The Comprehensive and Overdue Support for Troops (COST) of War Act of 2021 would provide generations of veterans suffering from toxic exposures their due benefits and care for the first time in VA history. The legislation recently passed the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee in markup unanimously and was introduced by committee chairman Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT).
The bills would be the most significant federal action in decades, said Shane Liermann, deputy national legislative director for Disabled American Veterans.
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“Both of these bills are much larger than anything we’ve seen before,” he said. “We really are at a historic moment."
The COST legislation specifically recognizes the federal government’s responsibility to provide health care and disability compensation to veterans fighting the effects of toxic exposure connected to their military service. The legislation would allow all veterans who were at risk of toxic exposure, obtain immediate and lifelong access to health care from VA.
It would also establish a new science-based and veteran-focused process for the establishment of new presumptive conditions and would provide benefits to thousands of toxic-exposure veterans who have been long-ignored or forgotten, including Agent Orange veterans suffering from hypertension.
Grunt Style co-owner and veteran Tim Jensen has had friends and co-workers who were veterans who have developed diseases related to toxic exposure such as various forms of cancer and respiratory ailments.
“A lot of the people I deployed with are coming up with these illnesses and passing away,” he said. “There’s probably two to three dozen individuals suffering from cancer just from my battalion.”
Burn pits have been used at U.S. military installations for years. The designated areas are dedicated to burning everything from human waste to excess equipment and other trash. These pits have exposed more than 3.5 million service members to toxic fumes, according to Liermann.
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“There are millions of veterans who have been exposed to harmful conditions with harmful hazards that are leading to a lot of negative long-term health effects,” Liermann said.
To further raise awareness about the issue, Jensen and Grunt Style have joined forces with 360 Burn Pits to create the Gaslighting the War Fighter podcast to discuss the issues that impact the veteran community and arm vets with the knowledge they need to ask both the VA and their medical providers the right questions.
“It’s really important for veterans to have that information so they are not being gaslighted when they go into the VA and talk about their problems,” he said.
Jensen said Grunt Style is including inserts that contain some of that information with each order it ships out.
Liermann said the next step for the legislation is the conference stage, where differences between the two bills will be hashed out.
“We need to do the right thing for those who willingly put themselves in harm’s way to defend this nation,” he said. “Doing the right thing should never have a price tag attached to it.”
To learn more, visit here and here.
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Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.
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