In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, chair of the Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee, penned an op-ed in the Post-Standard and the Watertown Daily Times today calling for the passage of the Presumptive Benefits for War Fighters Exposed to Burn Pits and Other Toxins Act. The bill would establish a presumption of service connection for the estimated 3.5 million veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxins while serving overseas and streamline the process for obtaining vital VA benefits.
The full text of the piece can be found here and below:
Our Veterans Deserve Access to Care
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand | November 11, 2021
For the last 20 years, we sent brave service members on tours of duty and exposed them to dangerous conditions on the battlefield – and off. We asked them to live on bases and in places around the world where burn pits were used to destroy everything from plastics and electronics to human waste, creating toxic, poisonous air that they breathed in every day.
I’ve heard veterans describe burn pits that sent black smoke and soot into the air like snow that clung to service members’ skin, clothes, tents, and lungs. I’ve heard them talk about the friends they served with who are now sick, dying or lost to ALS, heart disease, and glioblastoma. And I’ve heard from widows who watched their spouses battle against rare cancers.
We owe it to our service members and their families who sacrificed and risked so much for our country to get them the care they need. To deny them is a dereliction of duty. But when these veterans and service members go to the VA to ask for care, they are denied 8 times out of 10, often over lack of evidence that their disease is service-related.
When someone goes to war physically fit and healthy, gets exposed to toxic chemicals, and is now suffering with respiratory health problems or cancer, the connection is clear. Our service members should not have to spend years jumping through hoops, doing research, and paying for doctors and biopsies to prove to the VA that their illness is service-related. And no one who is grieving a spouse lost to these diseases should have to fight the VA to get the benefits their family is owed. But they are. Time and time again.
We have to change that. The longer we wait for more studies to prove the causation that is self-evident, the more veterans who will suffer and die.
The way we change this, and live up to our responsibility to our service members and veterans, is by providing presumptive coverage – that means creating a system that says if you were there and you are sick, you are covered. My bill, the Presumptive Benefits for War Fighters Exposed to Burn Pits and Other Toxins Act, will do that. It would grant coverage to all the veterans who have deployed to fight in war and have now developed cancer or respiratory ailments – no more barriers, no more needless hurdles to clear.
The VA estimates that 3.5 million people were exposed to burn pits, and more than 270,000 veterans and service members have already added themselves to the Burn Pit Registry. This is a health crisis in the making. It has already started and it’s only going to get bigger.
It took years of fighting to provide health care coverage to the Blue Water Navy veterans exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. And it took years of fighting to get coverage for our 9-11 first responders who were exposed to the same toxins at Ground Zero that our service members were exposed to from burn pits. None of those heroes had years to wait. Neither do these veterans. This is not the time for half measures.
We need to act now to get help to those who are already sick and to build a program that will ensure that those who get sick in the future don’t have to continue doing battle with the VA to get the health care they need and have more than earned. This is the time for true presumptive coverage.
I am glad to see my bill was included in House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Takano’s Honoring Our PACT Act and I will keep working to get our veterans the presumptive coverage they deserve.
We have to reckon with the full cost of the last 20 years of war. That includes caring for these veterans. If we can spend trillions of dollars waging war, then we can certainly afford to take care of those who risked everything to fight in it. It is truly the least we can do.