Sunday, December 6, 2009 3:45 AM
By Barbara Carmen
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
The agency that Franklin County military veterans turn to for help has given its executives raises of 66 percent to 80 percent since 2005 -- unbudgeted increases that now are threatening to drain money away from veterans.
Leaders of the Franklin County Veterans Service Commission say the raises are justified.
"We're doing an outstanding job," said board member Carl W. Swisher, a Navy veteran who represents the American Legion.
The agency, based at Veterans Memorial, offers emergency help such as subsidies for rent, medical bills and food to military members, veterans and their dependents.
Veterans Service officers also help veterans apply for federal, state and local benefits such as disability payments.
But hundreds of frustrated veterans are pouring into agencies in neighboring counties for help that should be available at home.
Rebecca Lee, director of the Pickaway County agency, said one-third of her clients now come from Franklin County. Of the 3,452 people her office is helping, 1,087 are coming from Franklin County to get help.
"We have a $500,000 budget and five employees," she said, noting that Franklin County has a nearly $5 million budget and 20 employees. The state estimates that Pickaway County has about 5,000 veterans; Franklin County, 77,000.
Elected officials in Franklin County, who control the Veterans Service budget but not its operations, are outraged by these and a list of other complaints, including poor accounting controls that might have opened the door for abuses by two employees accused of theft.
"What I hear," county Commissioner John O'Grady said, "is that we've got employees under indictment, veterans who aren't being served, and they've got an administrative request for exorbitant raises that weren't budgeted."
He and other commissioners said they don't have the power to resolve veterans' complaints, but they are thinking about these issues as they plan the 2010 budget.
"I, for one, am not going to fund any questionable -- if not poor -- management decisions," O'Grady said.
The raises
Franklin County commissioners discovered only weeks ago that the Veterans Service had granted huge raises to top staff members; agency leaders came to them to say they'd exhausted the 2009 payroll account and were on the verge of being unable to issue paychecks.
Their plan to cover the shortage drew disbelief: They asked to take money from the account set up to provide food, rent subsidies and other emergency services to veterans.
Franklin County commissioners quickly transferred money from their own contingency account to cover most of the $128,424 payroll shortfall. But county leaders insisted that not a single dollar for big raises will come at the expense of needy veterans.
Some expenses, County Administrator Don L. Brown said, are "forgivable." The agency, for example, paid out $6,730 in overtime and spent $43,219 to hire an additional employee without notifying commissioners.
But $35,590 of this year's gap stems from raises for the three executives. Since 2005, the Veterans Commission has increased Director Douglas E. Lay's annual salary 66 percent, to $92,102. His financial officer, John Warrix, picked up a 69 percent raise during that period, to $72,823. And their administrative clerk-typist, Angela Cline, got an 80 percent raise, to $48,764.
This year, each picked up 12 percent raises, an unbudgeted outlay. Unionized employees got 3.5 percent negotiated raises.
Swisher said his board, not the executive staff, proposed the raises.
"We did this on our own," Swisher said. "We based it on other directors' salaries (in Ohio). We felt they deserved a raise because of the type of work they did."
Their office, which helped 17,000 veterans last year, is working harder, Veterans Service leaders said. The bad economy and a new batch of veterans from America's current wars have bumped up demand this year by 32 percent.
The director of Cuyahoga County's agency earns $120,783 a year, and Hamilton County's earns $94,279, according to officials there. Those agencies, however, have either much larger budgets or help nearly 50 percent more veterans than Franklin County's.
In 2006, the county had hired the Archer Group to determine appropriate pay scales; Veterans Service employees were underpaid at the time, it found. Each was brought up to scale by 2007, commissioners said. Now, however, all three are making more than 50 percent above the top of the scale the consultant proposed for 2009.
"They decided to go over their budget and then not tell us," county Commissioner Marilyn Brown said. "And, to cover their raises, they want to take the money out of (the fund for) services to veterans. That's what makes me so angry.
"I think that's the ultimate in irresponsibility."
Seeking help
While the Veterans Service wants to spend client-services money to cover their raises, veterans already are complaining that the agency isn't doing enough to help them.
"We're swamped with Franklin County veterans," said Lee, the Pickaway County official. She also is director of the National Association of County Veterans Service Officers.
"We used to see some, but honestly, in the last three to four years, it's become overwhelming. We'll help anyone who walks in the door, but we've had to start asking, 'Have you even made an effort to contact the Franklin County Veterans Service Office?'
"They tell us they're so frustrated because they're spinning their wheels down there" in Columbus.
Ed Mohler, director of the Fairfield County's veterans service agency, has heard similar complaints.
"The main complaint is that it takes so long to get in. They line up. They wait. They only take so many a day," Mohler said.
He said he doesn't count how many of his clients come from Franklin County.
Lay said he doesn't know why Franklin County veterans would drive elsewhere. His board members suggest that some simply are disgruntled because their requests for money have been rejected.
But Lee asked, "If Doug Lay is doing such a wonderful job, why are vets fleeing to other counties for help?"
Little oversight
The Veterans Service Commission, established by a Civil War-era law, is guaranteed a cut of county property taxes. But elected officials have little authority over the agency.
The Franklin County Common Pleas Court appoints the five commissioners, who represent military organizations and are appointed to five-year terms. The court can remove a commissioner "for cause" under Ohio law, but the judge must grant a hearing unless there is a criminal conviction involved.
Otherwise, "we have no oversight at all" after board members are appointed, said Judge Guy Reece, the court's administrative judge. Reece does meet with the group occasionally to urge them to follow policy and be consistent.
Judge Charles A. Schneider, who will become administrative judge in January, agreed: "We don't manage, and we have no control over the budget.
"Is that a good business model? Probably not."
Missing controls
The loss of stacks of grocery cards, meant to feed hungry veterans, points out what both Lay and Franklin County commissioners say are problems with safeguards and procedures in the agency.
Lay reported the thefts in August. But the cards were being taken for nearly a year, according to an indictment of one employee.
Gloria J. Woodard, a service officer whose job included helping veterans get emergency groceries, is accused of forging county records to steal Kroger gift cards.
"The amount alleged to have been taken through this scheme is $11,250," said Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien.
Woodard pleaded not guilty, and her trial is set for Feb. 9. Her attorney, Frederick Moses, declined to comment about the charges but said more information will come out.
"She has a very long history of service with the military and the Veterans Service Commission," Moses said. "And she is really a good person."
Lay said agency leaders are working to devise better safeguards. Until then, the cards have been removed from the agency's two neighborhood offices, 314 N. Wilson Rd. and 1055 Mount Vernon Rd. Veterans can get them only at the main office near Downtown.
O'Brien said theft-in-office charges for "a similar scheme" are pending against a second Franklin County Veteran Services Commission employee. That worker is on paid administrative leave.
bcarmen@dispatch.com
Vets agency ripped for raises
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Stealing food cards, huge raises, this is the type of behavior that makes people mad and think how the veterans who have been betrayed feel. Veterans should not be able to pick and choose which county office they go to, they should use the office where their home is, plain and simple.....
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Vets agency ripped for raises
Monday, December 7, 2009
For U.S., a record of neglect Agent Orange
For U.S., a record of neglect
Part 1 of 5: U.S. veterans exposed to Agent Orange face delays and a maddening bureaucracy as they seek compensation for related illnesses. In Vietnam, where untold numbers of people suffer from the same maladies and the chemicals continue to poison the environment, government officials wonder how the U.S. can ignore the ongoing effects of the defoliants.
Part 2: 'Insult to injury'
For many U.S. veterans, the bureaucratic fight to be compensated for health problems linked to Agent Orange amounts to a new and unexpected war, long after the shooting ended overseas
Part 3: Born into controversy
Coming Tuesday: The most contentious question surrounding the use of defoliants in the war is their impact on Vietnamese citizens, particularly the suspected link between the herbicides and birth defects.
Part 4: A poison still potent
Coming soon: New research finds former U.S. airbases in Vietnam remain polluted from defoliants, underscoring the urgency of a solvable problem. The U.S. has done little to clean up the hot spots.
Part 5: Danger not averted
Coming soon: The Tribune unearths documents showing that decisions by the U.S. military and chemical companies that manufactured the defoliants used in Vietnam made the spraying more dangerous than it had to be.
The lingering controversy over the herbicides on both sides of the Pacific Ocean provides a sobering reminder of the often unforeseen consequences of war at a time when the country is fighting protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We do not know the answer to the question: What happened to Vietnam veterans?" said Jeanne Stellman, an epidemiologist who has spent decades studying Agent Orange for the American Legion and the National Academy of Sciences. "The government doesn't want to study this because of international liability and issues surrounding chemical warfare. And they're going to win because they're bigger and everybody's getting old and there are new wars to worry about."
The VA said in 2003 it would take the model under advisement. The agency is still evaluating it.
"I'm surprised that it hasn't been pursued more energetically," said Dr. David Savitz, a physician at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City who chaired the institute's review panel.
In September, the VA announced a broad, three-year study on Vietnam veterans' health, but it won't look specifically at defoliants like Agent Orange. Coming more than three decades after the war ended, the plan has many veterans believing the government is simply waiting for them to disappear.
"The mantra of the VA is delay, delay, delay until they all die," charged Paul Sutton, a Vietnam veteran and former chairman of Vietnam Veterans of America.
Retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, now the secretary of veterans affairs, has acknowledged the adversarial relationship between the VA and former soldiers. A Vietnam veteran who was wounded in combat, Shinseki has vowed to be more of an advocate for those who serve the country.
Members of Congress say much of the foot-dragging on studying Agent Orange is tied to the bottom line.
"I don't think they really want to know the answer," said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. "The (financial costs) would be so high that they'd scare the hell out of everybody."
Rhis is the story that makes the average veteran mad as hell, it depends on WHO your friends are if the VA helps you in a quick mode, or if like most veterans filing claims, they die before the claim is ever adjudicated. Friends do matter like the old saying goes "it's not what you know, rather is it who you know" this article sums it up rather well old school ties and all.....
Jack Cooley delivered his final argument in a long, distinguished legal career from a hospital bed.
Four months before succumbing to multiple myeloma, the Chicago-area Vietnam veteran and federal magistrate judge wrote a 140-page claim for justice and filed it with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Cooley's message to the government was personal and direct: Agent Orange is killing me, and you need to take responsibility.
Cooley didn't know it last spring, but when the former Army artillery captain filed his disability claim, he was just entering a maddening bureaucratic maze many veterans know well. The VA would kick back Cooley's claim after a month, saying he lacked the required proof he'd served in Vietnam.
Cooley could have spent months navigating this convoluted path. But with Cooley's life fading, his family reached out to an old friend, a member of his West Point class of 1965. It was former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, recently appointed secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In short order the obstacles to Cooley's claim disappeared. The VA delivered three monthly disability checks for $2,700 before Cooley died July 21, at 65, in Evanston.
"This was insult to injury," said his daughter Christina. "If Gen. Shinseki was not ... a family friend and a West Point classmate, we would have never seen a dime. It makes me think about everybody else out there struggling without resources."
I am sad for Jack Cooley and his family but because of his friendship with General Shinseki and who is now in a position to help an old friend and his family, the red tape was cut and quick my claim took 7 years it appears his friends was done in days why? I think we all know the answer to that I was nothing but a Army veteran with no friends and who had made the local VA Regional Office mad and they made me pay by denials and appeals etc thanks to a decent BVA Judge I finally got my claim settled October 2002 - April 2009 thank god I lived long enough....
How many veterans don't?
Please read the entire series from the Chicago Tribune this should get a PulitzerSphere: Related Content
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Second in a series: Vietnam vets wait years and fight skeptical agency to get disability
www.chicagotribune.com/health/agentorange/chi-agent-orange2-dec06,0,2356181.story
chicagotribune.com
For Vietnam War veterans, injustice follows injury
Second in a series: Vietnam vets wait years and fight skeptical agency to get disability
By Tim Jones, Tribune reporter, December 6, 2009
Also see map of Spray areas, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia at:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/agentorange/chi-091204-agentorange-map,0,1959438.htmlpage
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/agentorange/chi-agent-orange2-dec06,0,5115651,print.story
Jack Cooley delivered his final argument in a long, distinguished legal career from a hospital bed.
Four months before succumbing to multiple myeloma, the Chicago-area Vietnam veteran and federal magistrate judge wrote a 140-page claim for justice and filed it with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Cooley's message to the government was personal and direct: Agent Orange is killing me, and you need to take responsibility.
Cooley didn't know it last spring, but when the former Army artillery captain filed his disability claim, he was just entering a maddening bureaucratic maze many veterans know well. The VA would kick back Cooley's claim after a month, saying he lacked the required proof he'd served in Vietnam.
Cooley could have spent months navigating this convoluted path. But with Cooley's life fading, his family reached out to an old friend, a member of his West Point class of 1965. It was former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, recently appointed secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In short order the obstacles to Cooley's claim disappeared. The VA delivered three monthly disability checks for $2,700 before Cooley died July 21, at 65, in Evanston.
"This was insult to injury," said his daughter Christina. "If Gen. Shinseki was not ... a family friend and a West Point classmate, we would have never seen a dime. It makes me think about everybody else out there struggling without resources."
The Vietnam War ended almost 35 years ago, but for many veterans, battles with cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's disease and other maladies associated with defoliants used in the war are only now beginning. Until 2007, Jack Cooley had been in good health.
For many veterans, this is the unexpected new war, long after the old one ended.
The government has been slow to recognize the connection between wartime service and debilitating diseases that strike Vietnam veterans decades later. Even when they suffer from conditions officially linked to Agent Orange, veterans can wait years for their requests for disability compensation to run through the VA system.
Jack Cooley's death from multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer associated with exposure to Agent Orange, opens a window into the clogged workings of the VA, the final arbiter on war-related disability claims.
"The truth is, veterans who went to Vietnam returned much sicker than their (civilian) peers. Something happened over there. Why arm wrestle over it?" said Linda Schwartz, commissioner of veterans affairs in Connecticut and the author of early studies on the health of female veterans.
The VA declined requests to interview Shinseki, who has said he wants to change the culture at the agency and make it more of an advocate for those who serve the country.
As long-dormant effects of Agent Orange begin to surface in many Vietnam War veterans, the backlog of disability claims has been growing fast, despite the VA's adding more than 3,000 employees to handle the traffic jam.
"They're overwhelmed," said Joe Moore, a former VA attorney who now represents veterans in cases against the agency. "They simply can't do the decision-making fast enough."
In response to a December 2008 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington seeking to force the VA to decide claims in 90 days, the government acknowledged that "certain diseases for Vietnam-era veterans" are contributing to the backup.
The lawsuit, filed by the Vietnam Veterans of America and Veterans of Modern Warfare, argues that "thousands of veterans die each year" before the VA acts on their disability claims. The lawsuit alleges the VA takes at least six months to consider an initial request, and appeals can drag on for years.
"In the face of such delays, many veterans simply give up, choosing to accept less than they deserve rather than to endure years of delay and frustration," it said.
Or they just die early. According to data from the VA, 58 percent of the 490,135 Vietnam veterans who died from 2000 to 2007 were younger than 60.
A 3-act tragedyFor Vietnam veterans, the ongoing drama over Agent Orange can be broken into three acts. In the first, soldiers are totally unaware of the dangers posed by dioxin-laced defoliants sprayed in Vietnam. With the second comes outrage at the belated discovery of harm. And the third act is frustration with the bureaucracy set up to help veterans.
James Sprandel, a retired truck driver for the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation, has lived through all three.
Sprandel left South Vietnam almost 41 years ago, relieved to have survived his one-year tour as a combat medic at Tan An Airfield, about 20 miles south of Saigon. Today Sprandel, 64, uses a wheelchair because of diabetes and neuropathy, a nerve disorder that has drained the strength from his legs. The VA took 14 months to approve his disability claim.
Although he has little desire to revisit the war, Sprandel said he clearly recalls being assured that nothing was wrong with the water from rivers and streams around the air base. "There was a huge tank for bathing. ... We bathed in it, we drank it. They told us it was potable water," Sprandel said.
Never informed of the health risks, soldiers commonly reused Agent Orange barrels as barbecue pits, toilets and holding tanks for shower water. Studies show that as much as five gallons of residue often remained in 55-gallon barrels.
Not long after the war, it appeared the government would respond to the emerging realization that veterans faced a health threat from their exposure. Upon learning about Agent Orange's risks, Congress ordered a full epidemiological study in 1979 with the intent of determining and monitoring the health impact of exposure to the defoliants.
But the government balked at the directive and has yet to carry it out. Early studies on women who served in Vietnam suggested a higher risk of several types of cancer, as well as reproductive problems and birth defects in their children. But, as with male veterans, extensive studies still have not been completed.
Meanwhile, veterans joined a massive class-action lawsuit against Dow Chemical Co., Monsanto and other chemical companies that produced herbicides used in Vietnam. The case was settled out of court in 1984 for $180 million. The most common payment, distributed from 1988 to 1997, was for mental disorders -- which, ironically, research has never linked to Agent Orange.
Out-of-court settlements often suggest closure of a dispute, but the controversy has only grown in the last 25 years. At the time of the agreement scientists did not fully understand the long-term effects of dioxin, especially its connection to cancer and other slow-developing diseases, gradually documented in small studies.
In 1998, attorneys filed a new lawsuit against chemical companies that manufactured defoliants, contending that the settlement money had dried up by the time thousands of veterans developed illnesses linked to the defoliants. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the argument, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in March.
The most comprehensive study on the defoliants' health effects was conducted by the Air Force, which over 27 years took biological samples from and tracked the health of a small number of soldiers who personally handled and sprayed the chemicals during the war.
The Operation Ranch Hand study, named for the defoliation effort, has long been criticized for underestimating the impact of the chemicals. More recently, new information has emerged showing that some herbicides used in the war contained even more dioxin than was once thought.
Scientists who worked on the study say re-examining the rich data in this light could bring crucial new insights. "I believe the whole thing needs to be reconsidered," said Joel Michalek, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
Last year, Congress directed the VA to provide funding to do just that. So far the money has not been made available.
A war on 2 frontsMary Ann Dove's husband, a Vietnam veteran and former Marine, was diagnosed in 1989 with the same disease that killed Cooley, multiple myeloma, which the VA did not link to Agent Orange until five years later.
In fact, the Vietnam War had been over for 16 years before the VA acknowledged that Agent Orange exposure was associated with a higher risk of any postwar illnesses. The first three to be recognized, in 1991, were soft tissue sarcoma, non- Hodgkin's lymphoma and chloracne, a skin disorder that chemical companies had linked to dioxin decades earlier.
From 1991 to 1997, the VA accepted evidence that 10 diseases, including several cancers and neuropathy, were linked to Agent Orange. In the next six years, two diseases were added to its list.
Dove, a retired Army nurse who also served in Vietnam, recalls her husband saying early on: "You can fight the disease or you can fight the government -- you can't do both." He chose to fight the disease, which killed him within six years.
The government "is clueless about what it did in Vietnam and the damage that was done," Dove said.
The VA's slowness in evaluating claims may come down to sheer numbers. According to annual reports from the VA, the number of Vietnam veterans receiving disability benefits grew 20 percent from 2003 to 2008 to 1,015,410.
At the same time, the number of veterans receiving aid after fighting in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq jumped 88 percent, to 897,000.
"There's a lot of pressure to decide the cases from Iraq and Afghanistan quickly. What seems to be getting lost is those cases in the middle, where the veteran has already been denied and is now appealing," said Barton Stichman, joint executive director of the National Veterans Legal Service Program, a Washington-based advocacy group for veterans.
Stichman said the VA is generally tightfisted and "with Agent Orange, they are skeptical adjudicators."
Shinseki, a veteran wounded in Vietnam, proposed new rules in October for adding diseases to the expanding list of illnesses presumed to have been caused by the defoliant. The rules will undergo a period of public comment. He says he also wants to speed up the claims process.
"Since my confirmation as secretary, I've often asked why, 40 years after Agent Orange was last used in Vietnam, we're still trying to determine the health consequences to our veterans who served in the combat theater," Shinseki said in a statement at the time. "Veterans who endure a host of health problems deserve timely decisions."
Paul Sutton, the former chairman of Vietnam Veterans of America, called the announcement too little, too late.
"At this stage, about a million-and-a-half of us are already gone," Sutton said.
Feeling 'betrayed'Jack Cooley never expected to fight his government. He attended a military high school in St. Louis and, at West Point, developed a deep respect for Civil War Gen. Ulysses Grant. "Jack is not the type to 'take things by storm,' " his classmates said of him in the 1965 West Point yearbook, the Howitzer.
One July day in 1968, Cooley flew by helicopter to Quang Tri province's Landing Zone Jane, which he described in a letter to his wife, Maria, as "God-forsaken."
Cooley was traveling the area as an artillery officer based at Camp Carroll. In all, 168,000 gallons of Agent Orange and other defoliants were dumped on the province in the year he spent there, according to a Tribune analysis of spraying data.
"This is one of the better places to be at the present time," Cooley assured his mother in a tape recording he mailed home in early 1968.
After leaving the Army, Cooley would earn a law degree from the University of Notre Dame, clerk for a federal judge in Chicago and be appointed a federal magistrate. He earned a reputation as a skilled mediator who could bring people together. He wrote textbooks on problem-solving and taught at Northwestern and Loyola universities.
When he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, Cooley quickly made the connection to Agent Orange.
"I then (in the summer of 2007) put 2 and 2 together and realized that I had been exposed to massive amounts of toxic chemicals in the air observer assignment and other job assignments I had while in Vietnam," Cooley wrote in his claim to the VA for disability compensation.
The Cooleys started work on his claim to the VA while he was in intensive care in an Evanston hospital, having earlier undergone a stem cell transplant that failed to stop the spread of the disease.
Christina Cooley said her father "felt very betrayed" by the government's failure to disclose the dangers of Agent Orange to the men and women serving in Vietnam.
"He strongly believed the government is there to watch out for us," she said.
At Cooley's memorial service in September, friends from the West Point class of '65 attended, including Shinseki. At the end of the service, a short prayer was recited for "families who have lost a member to Agent Orange."
Two weeks later a packet from the federal government was dropped in Cooley's mailbox in Evanston. Inside were documents requested nearly four months earlier, verifying that Cooley had served in the Vietnam War.
Tribune reporter Jason Grotto contributed to this story.
Coming Tuesday: Controversy over illnesses in Vietnam
Friday, December 4, 2009
Agent Orange's lethal legacy Poisonous defoliants still exact a toll in U.S., Vietnam
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/agentorange/
Coming Sunday: U.S. vets battle for compensation
www.chicagotribune.com/health/agentorange/chi-agent-orange1-dec04,0,1766354.story
chicagotribune.com
Agent Orange's lethal legacy
Poisonous defoliants still exact a toll in U.S., Vietnam
By Jason Grotto and Tim Jones
Tribune reporters
December 4, 2009
Part 1 of a Tribune investigation finds that U.S. officials have neglected a lasting problem even as the health fallout has spread.
In central Indiana, two sisters struggle through another day, afflicted by a painful condition in which their brains are wedged against their spinal cords. They are in their 30s, but their bodies are slowly shutting down.
Thousands of miles away, amid the rice paddies of Vietnam, a father holds down his 19-year-old daughter as she writhes in pain from a seizure brought on by fluid in her skull, which has been drained four times in the past four years.
"The doctors said that they were sorry, but they could not cure her," the father says. "They told me I should take her home and that she would pass away very soon."
These women come from different cultures, from nations separated by more than 8,300 miles. Their fathers fought on opposite sides of the Vietnam War, but they are linked by the stubborn legacy of Agent Orange and other defoliants sprayed by the U.S. military decades ago.
Contaminated with dioxin, a chemical now considered the most toxic ever created by man, the defoliants are linked to a higher risk of multiple cancers, birth defects and other conditions that are contributing to a dramatic increase in financial compensation for U.S. veterans and their families.
Service-related disability payments to Vietnam veterans have surged 60 percent since 2003, reaching $13.7 billion last year, and now account for more than half of such payments the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provides to veterans of all wars. The average compensation payment for Vietnam vets is 41 percent higher than that for World War II veterans and 35 percent higher than for those who served in Korea. Those disability checks do not include the billions spent on health care for Vietnam veterans.
The price tag is only expected to escalate as scientists learn more about the effects of dioxin, as veterans are stricken late in life and as the children of veterans discover they are sick. In September, three more diseases were added to the list of illnesses for which the VA provides compensation -- an expansion the agency estimates will affect roughly 200,000 veterans and cost billions of dollars annually.
Meanwhile, untold numbers of Vietnamese -- including many who weren't even alive during the war -- also suffer from maladies associated with the defoliants. Tens of thousands more are at risk today from dioxin that remains in the environment at dozens of former U.S. military bases.
Yet in the 30 years since Agent Orange was recognized publicly as a potential health threat, the federal government has established a record of neglect.
U.S. veterans seeking compensation for their illnesses face delays and a maddening bureaucracy. Adding to their frustration, the federal government never has gotten to the bottom of Agent Orange's full impact, failing to follow through on requests for large-scale studies on how defoliants may have affected veterans' health.
In Vietnam, children sing songs of the devastation caused by Agent Orange and government officials wonder how the U.S. can avoid fully addressing the health and environmental havoc wreaked by the chemicals, even as the two nations foster stronger trade and military ties.
Since the countries normalized relations in 1995, Congress has allocated just $6 million for herbicide-related issues in Vietnam, even though Vietnamese officials say addressing them will take tens of millions. The Ford Foundation, a philanthropic organization that has made Agent Orange a focus, has provided $11.7 million.
With assistance from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Tribune spent a month traveling to eight provinces throughout Vietnam, conducting nearly two dozen interviews with civilians and former soldiers who say they were exposed to the defoliants.
The newspaper used a database of every spraying mission, mapping software and a GPS device to help corroborate their stories. And in the U.S., the paper researched thousands of pages of government documents and traveled to the homes of veterans to gauge the impact and measure the cost in both dollars and human misery.
Some scientists remain skeptical that Agent Orange and other defoliants directly cause diseases. But with hundreds of independent studies completed in the years since the war ended, there is strong evidence that people exposed to the herbicides have a higher risk of contracting illnesses such as soft tissue sarcoma and non- Hodgkin's lymphoma. The number of medical conditions linked to the defoliants continues to grow.
The lingering controversy over the herbicides on both sides of the Pacific Ocean provides a sobering reminder of the often unforeseen consequences of war at a time when the country is fighting protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We do not know the answer to the question: What happened to Vietnam veterans?" said Jeanne Stellman, an epidemiologist who has spent decades studying Agent Orange for the American Legion and the National Academy of Sciences. "The government doesn't want to study this because of international liability and issues surrounding chemical warfare. And they're going to win because they're bigger and everybody's getting old and there are new wars to worry about."
A deadly defenseThe U.S. military began spraying herbicides in South Vietnam in 1961, as the Cold War raged and America seemed beset on all sides by the threat of communism. Vietnam, a sliver of a country hugging the South China Sea, was split in half, with communists controlling the north. Led by nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh, the communists sought to reunite the country by toppling the U.S.-backed Republic of Vietnam in the south.
The greatest asset of the armies fighting the U.S. may have been the landscape of South Vietnam. Triple-canopy jungles cascading down mountainsides, patchworks of rice paddies and dense forests covered a battlefield where the line between enemy and civilian was often blurred.
The verdure allowed North Vietnamese forces to harass, resupply and melt back into the thick vegetation while surviving on food grown by local supporters.
The U.S. countered with chemical defoliants aimed at destroying the natural fortresses protecting the enemy. Over 10 years, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces released nearly 20 million gallons of herbicides in Southeast Asia, enough to blanket Lake Michigan four times. The vast majority of the missions took place in South Vietnam, but border areas in Cambodia and Laos were also sprayed.
Though Agent Orange was the most widely used herbicide, there were actually a half-dozen "agents," including White, Blue, Purple, Pink and Green. About 65 percent of them were contaminated with TCDD, a highly toxic form of dioxin, while more than 1 million gallons of Agent Blue contained arsenic.
The U.S. military stopped using Agent Orange in 1970 after a study for the National Institutes of Health showed that a chemical found in some of the compounds caused birth defects in laboratory animals. Soon after, the U.S. surgeon general halted the domestic use of that chemical, a dioxin-tainted compound known as 2,4,5-T.
Some limited spraying continued in Vietnam for another year, but only with agents that did not contain dioxin. The herbicide program, known as Operation Ranch Hand, stopped in 1971, four years before the war officially ended.
'We're a mess'Nearly four decades later, on a quiet street in Brownsburg, Ind., Carrie Price-Nix and Amanda Price Palmer have resigned themselves to a life of prolonged fatigue and permanent disability. They've had 41 surgeries between them in the past 20 years, including five brain operations, two spinal cord surgeries and one hysterectomy.
Their father, Stephen Price, was an Air Force mechanic who served at the U.S. air base in Da Nang in 1967. Even today, the site is contaminated with levels of TCDD that are as much as 365 times higher than what the World Health Organization deems safe.
Price died in April 2008 after fighting leukemia, diabetes and chloracne, all of which are associated with the herbicides used in Vietnam. He began receiving full disability compensation from the VA in 2005, after waiting two years for his claim to be approved.
His daughters both have Chiari malformation, a structural defect in the base of the brain associated with spina bifida, which the VA recognizes as a defoliant-related birth defect in the offspring of male veterans.
Price filed a claim with the VA for Price-Nix in July 2002. Three and a half years later, she was approved for partial compensation. By that time, her bladder had shut down, and her father was dying.
Palmer, who has similar health problems, has spent six years seeking compensation from the VA. "They're waiting for you to die," her sister said. Last week, the agency denied Palmer's claim, ruling her illness is not related to spina bifida.
The deterioration of Palmer's abdominal muscles forces her to remove her feces manually. Price-Nix has a pacemaker-like device to regulate her bowels and must catheterize herself daily.
"We're a mess," Palmer said jokingly. Then the sisters began weeping as they pondered the reality that there is no recovery from their conditions.
Far away from Brownsburg, in central Vietnam's Quang Binh province, Do Thi Hang, 19, suffers from symptoms similar to the sisters'. She has regular seizures caused by the fluid that accumulates in her brain. She can't walk and has trouble controlling her bowels.
Her parents have never been given a specific diagnosis because of Vietnam's underdeveloped health care system, but Hang's ailments mirror those of people suffering from spina bifida.
As a soldier fighting the U.S., Hang's father, Do Duc Diu, 58, was stationed for four years at an abandoned U.S. air base called A So, located in a valley where parts of the Ho Chi Minh Trail wound along the Laotian border. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces sprayed more than 400,000 gallons of herbicides in the Aluoi Valley, formerly known as A Shau.
New studies show that areas where the U.S. military stored chemicals on the A So air base are still contaminated with dangerously high levels of TCDD.
Since the war ended, Diu and his wife, Pham Thi Nuc, have had 15 children. Twelve died before the age of 3, all from illnesses similar to Hang's, Diu said. Their small graves sit atop a sandy hill behind Diu's home where he goes nearly every day to burn incense.
"I can say that I have no future, no happiness," he said.
Invisible woundsThe compensation U.S. veterans now receive for herbicide-related illnesses was gained only after a long, hard-fought battle in which the lines between science and politics were often blurred.
Part of the problem was that veterans were returning home with invisible wounds. Their fight to receive recognition and compensation for their war-related illnesses, including post-traumatic stress disorder, opened the door for veterans of all wars.
"The better care that troops get now is owed to their Vietnam brothers," Stellman said.
New scientific studies, dogged investigations into political interference in government-sponsored studies and a $180 million settlement in a veterans' class action suit against chemical companies paved the way for the Agent Orange Act of 1991.
Among other provisions, the legislation created a list of "presumptive illnesses" for which Vietnam veterans could be compensated. It directed the National Academy of Sciences to review studies on the chemicals found in the herbicides and, every two years, recommend additions to the list. Diseases or birth defects are recommended if exposure to defoliants is more likely than not to increase a person's risk.
Since then, the VA has added 15 diseases as well as 17 birth defects in the children of female veterans.
But veterans groups say as many as a dozen more illnesses could be associated with the herbicides, as could numerous birth defects in the offspring of male vets.
One reason for the slow pace in adding diseases is that the VA relies on outside research on workplace exposure and industrial accidents instead of conducting a broader epidemiological study on veterans, which Congress first asked for in 1979. For years the agency said it could not study the impact of the herbicides on veterans because it had no way of measuring their exposure.
But that excuse is no longer valid, according to Stellman, professor emeritus at Columbia University's school of public health.
With her husband, Steven, an epidemiology professor, she compiled a comprehensive database on spraying missions and used it to develop an exposure model that has twice been blessed by the Institute of Medicine, an independent panel of medical experts whose recommendations on health policy help guide the VA's decision-making.
The VA said in 2003 it would take the model under advisement. The agency is still evaluating it.
"I'm surprised that it hasn't been pursued more energetically," said Dr. David Savitz, a physician at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City who chaired the institute's review panel.
In September, the VA announced a broad, three-year study on Vietnam veterans' health, but it won't look specifically at defoliants like Agent Orange. Coming more than three decades after the war ended, the plan has many veterans believing the government is simply waiting for them to disappear.
"The mantra of the VA is delay, delay, delay until they all die," charged Paul Sutton, a Vietnam veteran and former chairman of Vietnam Veterans of America.
Retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, now the secretary of veterans affairs, has acknowledged the adversarial relationship between the VA and former soldiers. A Vietnam veteran who was wounded in combat, Shinseki has vowed to be more of an advocate for those who serve the country.
Members of Congress say much of the foot-dragging on studying Agent Orange is tied to the bottom line.
"I don't think they really want to know the answer," said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. "The (financial costs) would be so high that they'd scare the hell out of everybody."
Jason Grotto reported from Vietnam; Tim Jones reported from Indiana.
jgrotto@tribune.com
tmjones@tribune.com
House Committee Examines How Federal Dollars Get to Local Veterans for Health Care
http://veterans.house.gov
House Committee Examines How Federal Dollars Get to Local Veterans for Health Care
Democratic Congress Provides Historic Budget Increases for Veterans and Vows Transparency and Accountability for Taxpayers
Washington, D.C. - On Wednesday, December 2, 2009, House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Bob Filner conducted a hearing to explore how the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) determines its resource needs and executes its spending plans for providing local medical care for veterans. The hearing specifically focused on how VA Central Office distributes and tracks the federal resources and how oversight is conducted to ensure that federal dollars reach the various programs and initiatives at the local VA medical centers.
Congress has provided a significant increase in resources for VA medical care in recent years. Appropriations for VA medical care have increased over 40 percent from $29 billion in FY 2006 to $40 billion in FY 2009. Despite the robust budget increases, concerns have been raised that allocations to some local VA medical centers have either remained stagnant or have not been proportional to the unprecedented increase in overall funding for VA medical care.
Committee members agreed to send a joint letter requesting a Government Accountability Office review of the budget planning and allocation process to determine the resources needed to provide proper medical care to veterans.
“Federal funds may not be flowing to the local VA facilities in the most efficient and effective manner and this hearing is intended to scrutinize VA’s decision making process in order to promote efficiency and best serve our veterans,” said Chairman Filner. “This Committee has worked to provide America’s veterans with a budget worthy of their service and sacrifice and it is essential that these resources are dedicated to keeping the promises that our country has made to our veterans.”
Following the enactment of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill, VA distributes approximately 75% of the funds to each of the 21 Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs) using the Veterans Equitable Resource Allocation (VERA) system, which essentially allocates funds based on where the veterans go for their health care. VERA makes adjustments to address such factors as patient mix, high-cost patients, geographic costs (for example, labor), research and education support costs, equipment and non-recurring maintenance activities. VA then delegates to its health care networks the power to make decisions on health care financing and service delivery, including most budget and management responsibilities concerning medical center operations. There are 153 medical centers in the Veterans Health Administration system.
A number of reasons were cited that affect the manner in which federal funds are delivered to local medical centers. First, VA must ensure that local needs and demands are met, while maintaining a certain level of centralization to ensure that dollars are spent effectively. Additionally, Members raised concerns that methods to share best practices between local facilities were not effective. Budget and management responsibilities concerning medical center operations are not standardized and, therefore, more difficult to fully account for.
Currently, resource allocations are based on the number of veterans seen in the region in the previous years. Members were concerned that this process did not offer adequate flexibility to the changing demographics of today’s veterans or sufficient responsiveness to the wide range of health care needs. Because funding levels are dictated by those veterans that seek care rather than veterans that are eligible for care, veterans that are unable to access the system are not a part of the VA’s decision making process. Members raised concerns that some rural veterans are prevented from accessing VA health care because of the long distances they must travel, often in poor health. Additionally, low-income veterans may not have the means to access their entitled health care benefits and thus, are not counted.
Filner concluded: “Under Democratic leadership, Congress immediately addressed the stagnant budgets that plagued the VA for decades; stagnant budgets which resulted in reduced access for veterans and a department that could not afford to reach out to veterans in need. Although President Bush undertook two military operations during his Presidency, resources remained restricted for the VA, thus inhibiting the agency from adequately preparing to care for the wounded warriors of the current conflicts. Now with appropriate funding levels, VA faces the enormous task to improve health care delivery to veterans who need it. This includes veterans from past generations, rural veterans, veterans in need of mental health treatment, and of course, wounded veterans from the current conflicts. Although the consequences of funding neglect cannot be corrected overnight, this Committee is committed to rigorous oversight of all aspects of veterans spending and operations to ensure long term fiscal responsibility, but more importantly to keep the promises made to our brave veterans.”
WITNESS LIST
Panel 1
· Clyde L. Parkis, Former Director, VISN 10, VA Healthcare System of Ohio
Panel 2
· Rita A. Reed, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Management, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
· Michael S. Finegan, FACHE, Director, Veterans Integrated Service Network 11, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Accompanied by:
o William C. Schoenhard, Deputy Under Secretary for Health Operations and Management, Veterans Health Administration
o W. Paul Kearns III, FACHE, FHFMA, CPA, Chief Financial Officer, Veterans Health Administration
###
Prepared testimony and a link to the webcast of the hearing are available on the internet at this link: http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/hearing.aspx?newsid=504.
Vietnam vets deserve better
Vietnam vets deserve better
Vietnam vets deserve better
By KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND
First published in print: Friday, December 4, 2009
Too many veterans who served our country decades ago still suffer from horrible medical problems stemming from their time in the military. Time and again, the federal government has failed to provide them with the quality care they have earned.
Sometimes, it is bureaucracy that stands in the way. Other times, it is red tape or cost-cutting measures that prevent vets from getting the care they deserve. But for hundreds of thousands of Vietnam veterans, it is a shameful technicality in the law.
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military sprayed 20 million gallons of the defoliant Agent Orange. The chemical cleared the way for combat troops to see their enemies, but it also infected service members with serious, long-term illnesses.
It is time to face the consequences of Agent Orange.
Right now, 800,000 Vietnam veterans, who were exposed to Agent Orange and need medical care, are being ignored. More than 13,500 of them live in New York.
Federal law requires the Department of Veterans Affairs to cover all illnesses directly linked to Agent Orange exposure. But in 2002, the VA determined that the government would only cover veterans who were "boots on the ground." That excluded those known as Blue Water veterans -- those who were on duty in the air and sea around Vietnam.
But Agent Orange didn't discriminate among those on land or water or in the air. When this toxin spread through wind and water, it infected millions of our troops stationed on ships and aircraft miles away from Agent Orange drop sites.
Just like those who were "boots on the ground," hundreds of thousands of Blue Water vets are chronically ill as a result of Agent Orange exposure.
From Type II diabetes to Parkinson's, to several blood and respiratory cancers and higher rates of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Agent Orange has been proven to cause a broad range of serious illnesses. But not one single Blue Water veteran's Agent Orange-related illness is covered by the VA.
These courageous veterans risked everything to fight for us. And now, because of their service and sacrifice, they are sick and need care. Serving as seamen or airmen should not deny them the needed benefits they've earned.
Even Dr. Mark Brown, former director of the VA's environmental agents service, has publicly acknowledged that there is no scientific basis for excluding Blue Water Navy veterans from coverage. But the VA continues to deny them care.
It's an outrageous injustice, and it must be changed.
Last month, I introduced the Agent Orange Act of 2009. It would fix the existing law so that Blue Water veterans and every service member awarded the Vietnam Service medal, or who was deployed on air, land and sea in Vietnam would be fully covered by the VA.
It would also streamline the VA's processing of Vietnam War veterans' claims for service-connected conditions by extending the VA's presumptive coverage of Agent Orange benefits to all Vietnam veterans.
Agent Orange is a very difficult chapter in our nation's history. It is time that we correct the errors of the past.
We have a solemn responsibility to those who answer our nation's call to service. They fulfilled their duty.
Now, it is our duty to make sure they have access to every benefit they have earned -- from health care to education and affordable loans to buy a house.
Let's make sure we never stop fighting for those who fought for us.
Kirsten Gillibrand represents New York in the U.S. Senate.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I want to applaud Senator Gillibrand for sponsoring this legislation, however I wish she would add a few groups of veterans to this piece of law, or she might want to consider a new law for the veterans that were used in this nations secret testing of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, drugs and biological weapons, these tests were mostly performed from the end of WW2 thru 1975 when Congress learned of the human testing thru the 1975 Department of the Army report on Human Experimentation. President Ford issued a Presidential Proclamation in 1976 that banned all government agencies, the military services, the CIA and anyone else from clandestine testing programs.
This was in response to the disclosure of the nuclear tests, the LSD experiments known as MKULTRA, the biological weapons tests at Fort Detrick that had been stopped after President Nixon signed the 1972 Bio-Weapons Treaty, the drug and chemical weapons had been tested on 7120 veterans of the Army and Air Force personnel at Edgewood Arsenal, Md, from 55-75, about 6,000 men had been used in Operation SHAD/112bioweapons experiments at Fort Greeley Alaska, and open sea trials off Hawaii, in the Cheasapeke Bay off Edgewood Arsenal, and other still not disclosed locations.
These veterans have largely been ignored by Congress, lied to by DOD and the VA, we have been told these experiments never happened, if we were there then we were NOT harmed by any toxic substances, we personnaly were NOT used in any hazardous experiments etc.
A Institute of Medicine Report published in March 2003 based on a FY 2000 survey of the 7120 Edgewood veterans, was used to placate veterans of the first gulf war that Sarin had not harmed them. The Edgewood veterans were the only known group of people that DOD had access to that had been exposed to Sarin. We were the control group used for this study.
One problem with this, they could only find 4022 surviving veterans of the experiments, even though they had access to VA, IRS and Social Security databases, they could not locate the other 3098 veterans. All of these men would have been between the ages of 45-65 in 2000, men of this age are either paying taxes, or in receipt of benefits checks from the VA or SS or SSD. I will grant a few men may have moved overseas and do not have any current data in the US, but not all 3098 of them. One can presume that the majority of them were already deceased. 40% of the test group, an extremely high number. Considering to be selected for the test program they only took the highest IQ's a soldier had to have GT score over 100, this score was also the cutoff score to be accepted into OCS. They were in good health or they would not have been in the military, and the majority of them were between 18-21 when selected for the 60 day Temporary duty assignment.
They also gave us extensive physicals when we arrived at Edgewood. Mental health tests, etc, it was the most extensive exam I had ever been given, before or since. We were told the program was so safe that they would not be doing any follow up studies afer we left. The real purpose behind no follow up studies is the fact none were programmed or funded for long term follow up. The only reason they found us in early 1980's was a report titled Veterans at Risk 1993 by the IOM, and then we were used as the control group to show Gulf War veterans that Sarin was safe, BS. The IOM ignored previous studies from the National Instiute of Health, and from SIPRI that show the known medical problems of Sarin exposure, and they wrote a very narrow report, that showed 25 per 100,000 developed brain tumors (cancer) and a higher than normal percentage of Sarin exposed veterans had sleep disorders, which is not a very high disability rating by the VA. It seems apparent the symptoms were financially acceptable to DOD that the IOM showed in the 2003 study, the NIH report showed links to pulmonary problems, cardiovascular problems, gastrointestinal problems, in other words, some medical issues that might end up in veterans being totally disabled or deceased by and would cost the DOD and or the VA billions of dollars.
Senator Gillibrand could do a lot very many veterans and their wives and children if they would look at all of these "forgotten veterans" not just the Agent Orange veterans of Vietnam, the government had not kept their PROMISE to these veterans, WHY?
Veterans get special gifts for family thanks to free shopping
Veterans get special gifts for family thanks to free shopping
By Katie Boer KPIC News Video ROSEBURG, Ore. -- The Christmas season is always about giving, and thanks to the American Legion Auxiliary (ALA), during Christmas Veterans shop for free.
The annual Christmas Gift Shop is put on by the American Legion at the VA auditorium every year to provide assistance to veterans during the holidays.
The shop features a wide assortment of gifts like homemade quilts and afghans, along with clothing and toys that vets can chose from for their families.
For some, it makes all the difference. "So many of them are homeless and so many of them can't afford to buy gifts, let alone mail them, you know, so this is our contribution every year to help them out," said Evelyn Welch of the ALA.
American Legion Representative Jack Skold said, "It gives them something to look forward to, they're going to send gifts home to their family, I think this is what they look forward to."
Each vet gets to choose a gift for each dependent they have, including one for themselves.
American Legion works together for over a year collecting items and soliciting donations before the shop opens every December.
World War II veteran Gerald Devey said, "I think its very nice of them, I couldn't believe it. I was told about this out in the parking lot out there, and I couldn't believe it. I mean, I've been coming here for quite a few years really."
The gift shop has been a holiday tradition through the ALA, and has been going on for 57 years.
Denny Costello, also a veteran, said, "Things are tight you know, and it makes it a little easier, it expands my ability to give gifts. Since Christmas is about giving, its the spirit of Christmas and it helps out on the pocketbook, it really does."
The shop is open Wednesday, and outpatients or inpatients that haven't attended can shop for gifts from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
What a GREAT thing for this community to do, and to have been doing it for the past 57 years is awesome................my hat is off to these people
