The VA will start processing PACT Act claims on January 1, 2023
If you’re experiencing what you believe is an ailment related to the PACT Act, the VA will start processing claims on January 1, 2023. The PACT Act is The Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act.
The VA updated their list of presumptive conditions that veterans can file disability for. In conjunction with the PACT Act, the Veterans Administration is encouraging Veterans to register for the burn pit registry. An optional face-to-face evaluation is available for those who want to go beyond completing the registry.
From The Gazette:
The Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act is a historic new law that will help the VA provide benefits to millions of toxic-exposed veterans and their survivors. The PACT Act adds more than 20 new presumptive conditions for burn pits and other toxic exposures, and it adds more presumptive-exposure locations for Agent Orange and radiation.
Details regarding the new presumptive conditions and new qualifying service locations/dates can be found at www.VA.gov/PACT.
Conditions outlined in the PACT Act have already taken a serious toll on many veterans and their families. To ensure veterans, their families, and survivors receive the benefits they have earned, VA is considering all conditions established in the PACT Act to be presumptive as of August 10, 2022, the date President Biden signed the bill into law.
Let me make this crystal clear to veterans reading this column: File a PACT Act claim before the one-year mark, Aug. 10, 2023, in order for your benefit payments to have an effective date of August 10, 2022, if your claim is approved. “This is the single greatest expansion of benefits in VA history,” Michael Rohrbach, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and the director of the Denver VA Regional Office, recently shared with me. “I encourage all my fellow veterans and their survivors who believe they may be entitled to benefits, to not wait and apply right away.”
VA will begin processing PACT Act claims on Jan. 1, 2023, the earliest date possible.
Furthermore, VA is prioritizing the claims of veterans with cancer to make sure they get timely access to the care and benefits they need. Generally, if a veteran applies for benefits before Aug. 10, 2023, and that application is granted, that person will receive benefits backdated to the date of the bill signing: August 10, 2022.
The Gazette has additional information.
Category: GWOT, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Veteran Health Care, Veterans Issues, Veterans' Affairs Department
Seriously? It looks like durn near every Navy nuke who has cancer will be eligible for consideration.
“You worked as an x-ray technician, in a reactor plant, or in nuclear medicine or radiography (while on active duty or during active or inactive duty for training in the Reserves)”
“For purposes of this section the term “radiogenic disease” means a disease that may be induced by ionizing radiation and shall include the following:”
“(xxiv) Any other cancer.”
“Other diseases specified in paragraph (b)(2) of this section must become manifest 5 years or more after exposure.”
(b)(2) being the ‘any other cancer’
Of course, they won’t get it but it looks like they’re eligible.
“ionizing radiation”
What about us Signal types exposed to non-ionizing radiation?
I’m talkin 50 KW microwave antennas next to the barracks.
Didn’t need a blankie to stay warm at night.
Or how bout anyone who sat around the barrel burning shit
while shootin the shit with their buddies in Viet of the Nam?
We should at least get a commemorative device for the
campaign medal.
Monetary compensation would be a nice gesture….
Looks like my two cancer experiences (testicular and prostate) are now presumptive.
Campaign medal with the burning turd device. Awesome!
Yeah.
All the bullshiters are about to come out of the woodwork.
I wonder if diversity, equity and inclusion will be factored in as well.
What was it we were always told?
“Nukes need not apply.”
Of course, if I die of cancer it’ll probably be asbestos-related, but oh well.
Oh ye fools and cons, come on down to the Other Greatest Show on Earfff!
Next on the VA redistro show: after salary expenses paid, the coffee budget, remediating the mold(s) in the
boathouse’employee break room’, and our drugs-for-everybody program…Get in line for your leftover tokens! You have a 1-in-420.69×10^19 chance to get a free coffee or fountain drink (redeemable once a year) or your choice of one type of key chain that reads “Freedom taint (sic) free”. The VA regerts the error but since one hundred million units were purchased we will have to expend all items before compensation resumes.
But for real, I’m really glad for the govemenrt epmlomees lion share.
Oh great, something else for the va to fuck up at the exponential rate. If they are as efficient at this as they were with agent orange, I have no intention of bothering with it.
How much will Beau get? Will Hunter pick up some because of the exposure he got for boinking Beau’s wife? Will the Big Guy get his 10% off the top of each claim?
Here’s a novel idea; send the bill for this to the countries (read oil companies) that caused us to be there in the FIRST place.
“Here’s a novel idea; send the bill for this to the countries (read oil companies) that caused us to be there in the FIRST place.” – KoB
If it were about oil, we invaded the wrong country. We get the majority of our oil from the Western Hemisphere. Makes sense, as it is more efficient to use pipelines than to have them shipped in.
The attached chart provides a breakdown of where we get our oil. We get approximately 12.9% of our oil from the Persian Gulf area. These numbers have been steady for a long time, even with the “give and take”. Iraq is not even listed as a separate percentage from the Persian Gulf area, as Venezuela is from the Latin America area.
In a war about oil, it would have made better sense, and have been more efficient, if Venezuela was invaded instead.
Oh I agree that WE don’t need their oil, never have. Hence my (read oil companies) insert. Going back to the Oil embargo placed by the ME countries in the ’70s it was the rest of the world that got hit hardest. No damn doubt that the Gulf War 1 was all about protecting the Oil Companies investments AND the oil producing countries resources with American blood and treasure. Just my opinion (and some others) ALL of the constant conflict in the ME has been based on protecting that cheap, easy to get to, life blood of the World Wide Industrial Machine since the 19teens. One of the few things I give Shrub 1 was he made the rest of the world pony up with men, machines, and money during DS.
Our exposure to burn pits was because we sent American Boys to do what ME Boys shoulda been doing. We need to quit being Beat Cops for the World.
If Saddam never invaded Kuwait, we would not have been able to coble a coalition to go in to liberate Kuwait. The above graphic does not just reflect reality today, but reflects the reality that has been in place for a long time. From a business standpoint, protecting our oil investments in that area, using force, would be inefficient. It would be more applicable to the situation that we had in Russia. Many of the companies that pulled out of Russia earlier this year were pulling out of an operation area that was not as lucrative as their operations in other parts of the world.
Conflict in the ME went on long before the 20th Century, before oil became its form of “gold”. As for stopping our being “beat cops” for the world, our enemies and adversaries would love for that to happen. The sooner we get out of their way, the faster they can achieve their objectives.
That NPR chart is from 2012 and badly dated. Canada for example now ships more than most of the others combined. That is why the pipeline had to die. Cheap oil would have kept gas prices down for decades even with Biden attacking US production.
This chart is out of date too, but much closer:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/201844/us-petroleum-imports-by-country-since-1985/
5JC: This chart is out of date too, but much closer:
“These numbers have been steady for a long time, even with the ‘give and take.” – thebesig
The context for that statement:
“We get the majority of our oil from the Western Hemisphere.” – thebesig
Your reference actually supports my argument, as we get the majority of our oil from the Western Hemisphere. I mentioned “give and take”, as the chart that I posted represented one point in time, and that it changed from then, and it was a change from the previous numbers.
However, regardless of how the give and take went, the majority of our oil comes from the Western Hemisphere. This is the reality that I’ve presented to those who think that the Iraq War was about Oil. Leftists shouted this “from the roof” in the 2000s and teens, and I’d hammer them with the numbers showing that most our oil came from the Western Hemisphere.
Oh goody, something else for the phonies to get paid.
Meanwhile, legit vets with legit issues are given a hearty handshake and a big fuck you.