VA Adds Coverage for 'Presumptive' Ailments

The Department of Veterans Affairs is once again giving the benefit of the doubt to veterans who served in America's most recent conflicts by assuming that their illnesses are linked to their wartime assignments.

The department on Sept. 28 published final regulations to make it easier for vets who served in the Persian Gulf War and the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to receive health care and disability compensation for nine diseases that have been associated with duty in Southwest Asia.

"This is part of historic changes in how VA considers Gulf War Veterans' illnesses," Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki said. "By setting up scientifically based presumptions of service connection, we give these deserving veterans a simple way to obtain the medical and compensation benefits they earned in service to our country."

The latest list of presumptive illnesses comes only days after Shinseki went before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and defended a similar action the VA took recently when the agency added three more illnesses to its list of diseases linked to exposure to Agent Orange and other dioxins used in Vietnam. The presumptions of service connections take the onus off the veteran in proving his or her illness was related to their service, making it easier to get medical care and compensation for any disability.

This action axiomatically creates a need for a larger VA budget, a concern among some current and former lawmakers. Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, co-chairman of a committee looking for ways to reduce the deficit, recently came under fire from veterans groups for criticizing the cost of veteran benefits. Simpson remarked on "the irony that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess."

On the Hill, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., a champion of veterans for his successful push to create the Post-911 GI, successfully urged fellow senators to amend the 2010 war supplemental to limit spending on the three illnesses Shinseki added to the Agent Orange list while lawmakers studied the secretary's decision.

Webb is concerned that the growing list of presumptive illnesses will cost the government millions in compensation for illnesses that may not have been contracted as a result of a veteran's service. The VA said in August when it added ischemic heart disease, Parkinson's disease, and several forms of leukemia to its list of Agent Orange-linked presumptive illnesses would cost about $40 billion.

The new presumptive illnesses are not related to dioxins but to other factors, including exposure to sick or infected animals or animal products in Southwest Asia and Afghanistan. Brucellosis and Campylobacter jejuni, two of the new presumptive illnesses, are usually traced to contact with contaminated animal products, including cheese, yogurt and dairy.

Also named as presumptives in the Sept. 28 announcement were Coxiella Burnetii (Q fever), Malaria, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Nontyphoid Salmonella, Shigella, Visceral leishmaniasis and West Nile virus, the VA said in its statement.

Shinseki said the decision to add the new presumptives was based on a review of a 2006 report of the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine entitled, "Gulf War and Health Volume 5: Infectious Diseases." The 2006 report differed from four prior reports by looking at the long-term health effects of certain diseases determined to be pertinent to Gulf War Veterans. Shinseki decided to include Afghanistan Veterans in these presumptions because NAS found that the nine diseases are also prevalent in that country.

The final regulation establishing the new presumptions extends to the start of the Persian Gulf War on Aug. 2, 1990, up through the current wars.