The Department of Veterans Affairs has started the process to designate multiple myeloma and acute and chronic leukemias as linked to military service in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and elsewhere, a change that will give affected veterans quicker access to disability compensation.
During his last Veterans Day address as commander in chief, President Joe Biden announced the update to the list of diseases presumed to be related to exposure to burn pits and other airborne pollutants according to the PACT Act.
The change follows an announcement last week by VA Secretary Denis McDonough that bladder cancer and ureter cancers will be designated as presumptive illnesses, and veterans who served at Karshi-Khanabad Air Base in Uzbekistan in the early 2000s also would qualify for expedited claims.
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"Too many of our nation's veterans have served only to return home to suffer from permanent effects of poisonous chemicals," Biden said during his address Monday at Arlington National Cemetery.
The PACT Act update, which must go through the federal rulemaking process before it is finalized, followed a 15-month study by the VA into whether veterans who served in designated areas had higher rates of those cancers.
The VA launched its own internal process in 2021 to determine whether health conditions may be considered related to military service and, since then, has concluded that asthma, rhinitis, sinusitis, nine rare lung cancers and now bladder cancer, ureter cancer, acute leukemia, chronic leukemia and multiple myeloma fall into that category for personnel who served during specific time frames and locales.
Those who are covered include post-9/11 veterans who served in Afghanistan, Djibouti, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Uzbekistan and Yemen, and those assigned to the Persian Gulf region, including Somalia, on or after Aug. 2, 1990.
The VA also announced Monday that it intends to make health care less expensive for veterans enrolled in its health system by eliminating copayments for telehealth services provided in VA facilities.
When specialty or mental health care services are not available at a veteran's VA hospital or clinic, they often are able to get treatment from another VA facility at a telehealth center in their local VA.
The proposal would eliminate copayments for that service.
The VA also said Monday that it plans to fund a grant program to build VA telehealth connections in non-VA facilities, giving veterans in rural or underserved areas more access to VA care.
In September, the VA announced that veterans will be able to access emergency care from a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital by telephone or video under a new program that links patients experiencing medical distress with a VA provider.
"The thing people will look back on about this period is that this is a new VA, that VA brought itself to veterans rather than expect veterans to change their lives to fit into VA," McDonough said during a Veterans Day appearance on CNN.
During his last address to veterans, Biden said that, every day as president, he has carried the number of war dead and injured from Iraq and Afghanistan with him: 4,620 deaths and 32,766 wounded in Iraq; 2,465 deaths and 20,769 wounded in Afghanistan.
Biden has been criticized heavily for the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that included the deaths of 13 U.S. troops at the Kabul airport on Aug. 26, 2021, but he said Monday he was determined from the start of his term not to leave the end of the Afghanistan war to another president.
"It's been the greatest honor of my life to lead you, to serve you, to care for you, to defend you, just as you defended us, generation, after generation, after generation," Biden said.
"The world is depending on each of you and all of us -- all of you to keep honoring the women and the men and the families who have borne the battle, to keep protecting everything they've fought for, to keep striving to heal our nation's wounds, to keep perfecting our union," he said.
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