Honoring Our Veterans

Sound bite

Jon Stew­art

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUW3-dzmRZc (2:00 – 2:30)

“Hon­est­ly, I don’t even know what to say. I’ve been com­ing down here 10—15 years, I’m used to the hypocrisy. Christi­na Keane will tell you from the VFW, she sat me in an office with Mitch McConnell and a war vet­er­an from Ken­tucky, and he looked that man in the eyes and he said, ‘we’ll get it done’. He lied to him, because Mitch McConnell yes­ter­day, flipped.”

Music

Civ­i­lized Assault

The PACT Act was a bill that had fair­ly recent­ly been signed into law, promis­ing ben­e­fits to vet­er­ans that were exposed to chem­i­cals and tox­ins while serv­ing in the armed forces.

With the bill now passed the ques­tion remains whether or not this is a long-term solu­tion for mil­i­tary mem­bers who still risk expo­sure and if vet­er­ans are able to claim those benefits.

This is Mike Thomp­son, and you are lis­ten­ing to the Atom­ic State.

Because Act was recent­ly passed, I want­ed to try and get a scope of how it would affect vet­er­ans and what were the expe­ri­ences of vet­er­ans who had come into con­tact with toxins.

I man­aged to meet up with a stu­dent at a famil­iar bar at my local col­lege cam­pus who had such an experience.

We had at least one burn pit on our base, and that’s usu­al­ly how the mil­i­tary, just like dis­pos­es garbage. Stuff when you’re in the field. Um, just cause they don’t real­ly have any san­i­ta­tion ser­vices. There’s no like garbage trucks or any­thing like that, so they don’t let it pile up. They usu­al­ly just have like a fur­nace or a big pit where they will just throw stuff in there with diesel fuel and then they let it out by, and that’s pret­ty much how it works.

A nd that’s tough. Cause on one hand there’s real­ly not much else they can do unless they decide to pick up all the garbage and trans­port it some­where else. That adds to cost and any more vehi­cles and more planes and. Stuff like that. I mean, I guess they could con­tract out, they could always con­tract out to like small com­pa­nies in the area to deal with garbage, but it depends where you are.

He got out a cou­ple months ago. And he claimed burn pit expo­sure with the VA because he has been hav­ing like res­pi­ra­to­ry issues. He hasn’t   been cuff­ing up blood to that extreme, but, um, he can’t run near­ly as far his hurt. So there’s some­thing going on. And he’s pret­ty young. He’s four, so I don’t think that should be an issue.

He does­n’t all, so I’m sure it just all has to do with like the amount of expo­sure you have if you like, live next to a birth­day or you were the guy that was throw­ing every­thing in, breath­ing it in every day for a. High, high­er, I dun­no, rate of exposure…

Um, and whether we knew it or not, it was extreme­ly can­cer­ous and guys were drop­ping dead at like 30, 35. And that was when peo­ple start­ed pay atten­tion to like, um, chem­i­cal expo­sures in the mil­i­tary. What’s going on with Kent Luon is, um, they have a mold prob­lem in old­er bar­racks and they have a water problem.

I don’t know if it’s where they keep water or if it’s the pipes that they go through, but, um, there’s prob­a­bly expo­sure in the water sup­ply and there’s mold in the bar­racks. So guys have res­pi­ra­to­ry issues from bring­ing mold and they have what­ev­er oth­er health issues come from drink­ing bad water.

Um, and the only times the mil­i­tary real­ly cares to fix these prob­lems are when guys get out and then there’s law­suit. And they go to the press, or the D‑O-D gets sued and now they have to fix it because they have no choice.

So, they put the pres­sure on the D‑O-D and the D‑O-D does some­thing. Cause at the end of the day, every­body in the mil­i­tary works for Wash­ing­ton. They work for the gov­ern­ment. So, peo­ple approach their con­gress mem­bers, they make known issues. Con­gress as a whole goes to the. And says you have to change things, and that’s usu­al­ly what happens.

It’s unfor­tu­nate that it has to come to that. Like the mil­i­tary will not change unless you forced them to, because the whole struc­ture is based on con­for­mi­ty. It’s based on show up. They’re like, I under­stand that’s how you have to fight a war. You can’t have a bunch of free fin­gers march­ing the battle.

How­ev­er, when your whole orga­ni­za­tion is based on that, it’s dif­fi­cult to change any­thing. Every­thing is a flight. Noth­ing wants to change, nobody wants to change. Nobody wants to do any­thing or change the way the sys­tem is set up unless you force them to, you put their feet to the fire. I hear that, man.

So, over the course of 20 years of war, and then when you include like Soma, like Soma­li and Kenya stock, you have hun­dreds of thou­sands of guys, mil­lions of guys that have cir­cu­lat­ed through these bases . Is that some­thing that you want to deal with? So, I think they tried to push it off as much as they could and now they have no choice, but they’re con­front it.

I feel like the gov­ern­ment has this pol­i­cy where it’s like, well, all of our guys come back from the mil­i­tary with like back prob­lems, knee prob­lems. They can’t. And they all had burn pit expo­sure. They’re like, well, we could fix it or change the sys­tem, or we could just pay them a thou­sand dol­lars a month.

So, I don’t wan­na sit on a high horse and like preach because why do guys have a lot of back and knee problems?

Because you car­ry­ing body armor and ammo and equip­ment car­ry­ing 70, 80 pounds around every day for like a year. It’s gonna have a lot of prob­lems on your joints. It’s very dif­fi­cult to avoid that unless you some­how find a way to cut the weight of every­thing in half. Um, you’re at like a small fob in a com­bat zone.

It’s like they’re, they’re no fuck­ing garbage trucks. So it’s like, well, you either let a pile up or you burn it. So, it’s not a, you know, sophis­ti­cat­ed method, but it works.

Music

Res­ur­rect

There, in a quaint build­ing, under a set of stairs that led to a small bar, was where I met the Quar­ter Master.

Things you learn in the ser­vice as a vet­er­an is, oh, an exact, yeah. An exam­ple, I used to be a bounc­er at a strip club when I got, I was going to col­lege pay my way, but I, I came across an acci­dent on 84, so I stopped and I, there was some­body there and I said, you call the police. I goes, yes, well call the, call the fire department.

There’s gas around here. Got the guy out­ta the car, opened his shirt, looked for red for punc­tures. He was­n’t punc­tured, raised his feet above his head and every­thing. It was what I was trained to do. You gimme that test. I could­n’t pass it if you gave me the answers, but it’s just the way thing your, your mil­i­tary ser­vice kicks in and you learn to enjoy things.

When after I retired, I guess my grand­son had to be, I don’t know, he, he was, he was like 16. I said, what are you doing? He says, noth­ing for New Year’s. I said, good. Pack a bag. We’re going to Maine cuz I knew a ranger up there. We got on Cadil­lac Moun­tain. That’s the first place the sun hits the Unit­ed States.

So when you’re stand­ing there and the sun hits you in the face, you’re alive. But you’re one of the first peo­ple who see the sun for that day. Not big to any­body else, but to my grand­son and me, it was a great deal. We had fun.

And had one guy go, what’s your real name? I said, well, you know, . If I tell you, you the IRS and the gov­ern­ment will only know  and they laugh.

Dur­ing the war in Viet­nam, he had been exposed to Agent Orange while on a submarine.

I said, if you were there, you’d know that was a smart com­ment at that time. But it’s the peo­ple that are in there doing it. All my doc­tors are are. I’ve had a ball with them. My, even my one doc­tor, she went, I checked you out for. Uh, vene­re­al dis­eases. I goes, what for? She said, I heard some of the nurs­es talk about you,

I said, you got me doc. They laughed and they talked to you about me. I’ll go have an x‑ray at nine in the morn­ing by three o’clock in the after­noon. I have a phone call from my doc­tor telling me what was on that x‑ray, what I can do and can’t do, and I fol­low up with a let­ter. My daugh­ter was wor­ried about me, so she called my doc­tor. She talks to my doc­tor more than I do.

But you see all this stuff and like I said, go for it. Get out there and leave your mark in a pos­i­tive way.

Part of this is get­ting old, don’t get me wrong…

My body feels it. Trust me. The, uh, I was always active, even as a kid. Played sand­lot foot­ball. I played lit­tle league base­ball. And then lat­er on when I went in the Navy, I played on the, uh, Davisville vol­ley­ball team, I was a set­ter. I sat on the bench in the bas­ket­ball team, fill­ing a posi­tion. But I picked up rug­by and I love rug­by. Played soc­cer in high school, pole vault­ed swam. So I’ve always been active.

A mat­ter of fact, uh, Thurs­day night here in East Hart­ford, or in East Hart­ford, we’re in a horse­shoe league.

It’s indoors and it’s fun. And some of these young kids that said, holy smokes, can’t believe what they’re doing. But you, I, how do my grand­moth­er put it? You wan­na die? Sit down and wait. You wan­na stay active and enjoy life? Do your thing. She lived to be 103 and she worked in a nurs­ery. My grand­fa­ther used to own a nurs­ery and she took care of every, she was out there plant­i­ng and everything.

But she was right. I see a lot of vet­er­ans that are in their eight­ies and nineties, and yet I pick up the paper. Two guys I went to high school with at 65 died. So, you know, you just, I don’t know, it just, I’m a vet­er­an. I’m proud of it and I will stick to it.

Music

Res­ur­rect

To answer these ques­tions, I found myself dri­ving through the nar­row streets of Nor­which to meet with some­one in Joe Courtney’s office who might.

He was a mechan­ic in the Navy and spent 23 years on a sub­ma­rine with 7 years of onshore duty.

Any­thing that was­n’t cov­ered by nuclear after I oper­at­ed, you know, made, that made oxy­gen. Got rid of car­bon diox­ide, car­bon monox­ide, hydro­gen, took care of the refrig­er­a­tion plant, so on and so forth. And then as time went on, you become senior. Now you’re respon­si­ble for over­see­ing all of that stuff.

Very dan­ger­ous, you know, on a sub­ma­rine, if one per­son mess­es up, every­body dies. Um, But it was real­ly cool doing what I did. I, I, I loved doing what I did, but after 30 years I was ready to retire. Cuz it’s very, very hard on your body to do that. You know, you’re walk­ing around up steel decks, going up, down ver­ti­cal lad­ders all day long.

You know, so after a while you’re like, okay, it’s time for some­body else when you’re stand­ing in a room and, you know, you’re, the old­est guy is 47, 48 years old. Yeah. And that’s pret­ty young in. Today’s soci­ety, and when you’re doing that, you’re pret­ty darn. I know it’s hard to do. I love doing it. You feel like you have purpose.

You know, when you wake up in the morn­ing, what am I gonna do today? I wan­na make a dif­fer­ence. I wan­na make pur­pose. I wan­na make at least change some­body’s life for the bet­ter. At least each day, you know, at least one per­son. And that’s what I, I lived for those 30 years. Help one per­son train, one per­son, teach one per, you know, what­ev­er it.

So I always had that pur­pose. Main rea­son I did­n’t get out of the mil­i­tary. I mean, every time my lis­ten­er was com­ing up, I thought about it. I inter­viewed for new jobs, I got new jobs. I turned those jobs down. I remained in the mil­i­tary, and I’m glad I did It turned out well. There’s a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ty out there.

There’s a lot of sac­ri­fice. You know, a lot of Christ­mases, Thanks­giv­ings, birth­days, birth­day chil­dren, stuff like that that you miss. So, and it’s not easy on a mar­riage either, you know? But I would­n’t change any­thing. I would­n’t change any of it. I loved what I did, you know? So now I’m try­ing to take care of vet­er­ans who did the same thing.

Uh, that was the pur­pose of it. Um, in that we have a lot of vet­er­ans who have put in claims for dis­abil­i­ty or should try to enroll in health­care and weren’t unable to, to get their ben­e­fits and or get enrolled in health­care because, this bill was­n’t in place. The Vet­er­ans Admin­is­tra­tion at the time did not rec­og­nize, the cor­re­la­tion between the burn pits and the health issues with the veterans.

Okay. So there’s a whole bunch of pre­sump­tive ill­ness­es. Ill­ness­es that are assumed have been caused by the burn pits or tox­ic expo­sures while these vet­er­ans served in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Sau­di Ara­bia, you know, dif­fer­ent, um, places that they were sta­tioned at. And it involves a lot res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es to sim­ply, put it, you know, blunt­ly, it’s most­ly respiratory.

Um, asth­ma, cyan­ites, rhini­tis, car­ci­no­mas of the, you know, of the breath­ing areas. So, there’s a lot of vet­er­ans who are young in their, in their for­ties who served, who have already passed away from this. And unfor­tu­nate­ly, it took that for every­body to rec­og­nize there is a link to their expo­sure that’s caus­ing these prob­lems with these younger veterans.

An act of bill was brought up to the house in a Sen­ate and was passed and it was approved, and it goes into effect on Jan­u­ary 1st, 2023. The VA is going full throt­tle towards this. They’re hir­ing extra peo­ple to assist with the health side of it and the ben­e­fit side to uh, you know, cause vet­er­ans are gonna sub­mit their claims.

Some of them are, are not able to work because of their illnesses.

So there’s gonna be a big influx of vet­er­ans nation­wide tak­ing care of that. Now here, specif­i­cal­ly in Con­necti­cut State, state of Con­necti­cut, they just did. Open house, um, in New­ing­ton on Sat­ur­day from 10 o’clock till I think two o’clock in the morn­ing. And vet­er­ans came and they did tox­i­cs expo­sure screen­ings, um, gave ’em all their infor­ma­tion, so on, so forth, so they can get enrolled into VA healthcare.

Um, obvi­ous­ly they have to prove that they serve in that, basi­cal­ly that bat­tle­field, Iraq, Afghanistan or some­thing like that. So that’s the post nine 11 guys, the guys that served after, you know, 2001, um, and the, the, the vet­er­ans that served dur­ing the Gulf War, um, you know, back in 1990 — 91 timeframe.

Then you have the Viet­nam vet­er­ans who served in Viet­nam, who were sup­posed to Agent Orange, which was a diox­in that was used to get rid of trees and brush and so on and so forth. So that chem­i­cal was very tox­ic. They did­n’t real­ize what it, what it was, you know, when they were doing it, they were big.

It’s all, it was all they still of drink­ing water. It was on in their bod­ies, and not only on the actu­al Viet­nam area, but also was in a water sup­ply. So the sailors out there that were close to, they were bring­ing that water into their ships, um, and they were drink­ing at show­er with it, so on and so forth.

So they also got, exposed to that chem­i­cal. The, the issue was, you know, they said Viet­nam was a con­flict that was just lim­it­ed to Viet­nam, but every­body that served in Viet­nam knows that Thai­land, Laos, Cam­bo­dia, they were all part of that also. So they final­ly rec­og­nized those coun­tries along with Guam, as an area where you would’ve been, you know, uh, exposed.

So these are all bar­ri­ers that have been removed and it’s gonna make it eas­i­er for vet­er­ans in these sit­u­a­tions to get the health­care and the ben­e­fits they’re enti­tled to. So, this is a big, big deal to help vet­er­ans that were exposed. Vet­er­ans that were not in those sit­u­a­tions they’re still the same situation.

But the vet­er­ans who were exposed to these chem­i­cals, burn pits, tox­ins, um, it’s, it’s gonna take care of them. You know, as far as the health and, and finan­cial­ly, they’re gonna get some type of dis­abil­i­ty. If they’re exposed and they have the ill­ness, they could just be exposed and tey don’t have any ill­ness­es. If they don’t have any ill­ness­es, then they’re just gonna remain the same.

You don’t, they’re not going to receive dis­abil­i­ty pay for no dis­abil­i­ty. You know what I’m saying?

That they’re gonna go ahead and sub­mit cl, you know, resub­mit their claims, uh, along with any addi­tion­al evi­dence they may have so they can look back to when they were denied. Okay. And in some cas­es, uh, I’m not pos­i­tive, but I’m pret­ty sure that these indi­vid­u­als begin large sums of mon­ey, um, from back pay, from not receiv­ing these, uh, these claims that were denied previous.

You know, I know what’s hap­pened with Viet­nam vet­er­ans in some cas­es, and it’s prob­a­bly gonna hap­pen with some of the post 9–11 vet­er­ans also.

It was very lim­it­ed. It was like less than 10 pre­sump­tive. That is now increased to over 15. Um, they’ve added kid­ney can­cer hyper­thy­roidism. Um, these dif­fer­ent ill­ness­es after sci­en­tif­ic research has proven the link to the diox­in expo­sure. So down the road you can fore­see that this pact that just passed, they’re gonna say, okay, this, um, expo­sure to, um, the burn pits may cause some­thing else.

It may cause some­thing far­ther down the res­pi­ra­to­ry line. Uh, it might be some­thing like some kind of skin dis­or­der, so on and so forth. You know, leukemia, Parkin­son’s, you know, you nev­er know, but only time will tell if these symp­toms devel­op and oth­er­wise healthy indi­vid­u­als. You know, the rea­son this hap­pens, stuff like this is you got peo­ple, like for instance, dur­ing Viet­nam, you have sol­diers who had no genet­ic his­to­ry of dia­betes, and now all of a sud­den you see 170 pound in-shape man with dia­betes. This is how they deter­mine these links. Well, obvi­ous­ly the gen­tle­man walks up and he’s 300 pounds and he smokes three packs a day and he has diabetes.

You’re prob­a­bly think­ing, ‘ugh, you know, maybe that’s your prob­lem’. But then you’ve got a guy that’s 180 pounds, he’s in great shape, why does he have dia­betes? And he’s nev­er had any genet­ic past. None of his par­ents, none of his broth­ers and sis­ters have this prob­lem. So, this is what hap­pens. And over time they’ll do more research.

And the VA has already start­ed the research many, many years ago. They have this one thing they’re doing. It’s called the Mil­lion Vet­er­an thing. You can do the research on it. They’re basi­cal­ly vol­un­teer. All vet­er­ans can vol­un­teer and they take a sur­vey and actu­al­ly give a blood sam­ple and they can see how genet­i­cal­ly, cer­tain things are affect­ing cer­tain vet­er­ans, depen­dent on their age group. Um, their diver­si­ty, what­ev­er cul­ture they’re, they’re from, you know, cause every­body has, uh, sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to what­ev­er your cul­ture is. You know, for instance, you know, I know what I came in the Navy, you know, the sick­le cell was a big deal.

You know, so it’s dif­fer­ent things like that. They, uh, they’re doing a lot of research on how each one affects cer­tain vet­er­ans. So, they con­tin­ued to do that research, um, to deter­mine, uh, you know, the pre­sump­tive ill­ness­es need to be broad­er, but right now it is what it is, 23, it’s a pret­ty sig­nif­i­cant amount of pre­sump­tive ill­ness­es, unfortunately.

Um, you get two dif­fer­ent, dif­fer­ent types of vet­er­ans. Okay. The typ­i­cal­ly they serve three, four years and they get out and they’re sick, and they could either be angry or they could be appre­cia­tive. Um, they’re proud of their ser­vice and they’re appre­cia­tive of the health, the VA’s giv­en them. Then there’s the oth­er ones that say, the gov­ern­ment poi­soned me and why aren’t they tak­ing care of me?

So I see both spec­trums of that. Um, you know, and depen­dent on the sever­i­ty of the ill­ness and the indi­vid­ual, I can under­stand that, you know, it’s, it’s hard for, um, you to tell some­body to suck it up, which all mil­i­tary guy guys get told to do back then, suck it up, you know, get through it. You’ll be following.

And then here they are when they’re 20 some­thing years old like you are, you made a rub­ber, you know you’re not gonna get hurt. You think you’re imper­vi­ous to pain and get­ting hurt, and so on and so forth. But as we get old­er, those ail­ments start to get us and they pre­vent us from liv­ing a healthy, nor­mal life.

So, when they run into bar­ri­ers like, ‘hey, I’m sick, I need help from the gov­ern­ment, VA, cause it’s the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment says no, they get angry.  because of the Viet­nam vet­er­ans, because of their, you know, their stance on, you know, the gov­ern­ment tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for what they did to ’em. This is why the PACT Act is com­ing out.

They laid the, the foun­da­tion for what the gov­ern­men­t’s sup­posed to do to take care of its vet­er­ans. You put us in that posi­tion and we, you made us sick. It’s your respon­si­bil­i­ty to take care of. Okay. I just think as a vet­er­an myself, you, you have to be mind­ful and you need to be, uh, patient in a lot of cases.

You can’t go around with your hair on fire yelling and scream because that does­n’t do any­body any good. Stay, you know, remain unemo­tion­al and, uh, and as long as you get the ser­vice orga­ni­za­tion, cause that’s a big thing. The ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions through­out the nation are the ones that go and talk to the leg­is­la­tors about what’s affect­ing their con­stituents, their vet­er­ans, and their com­mu­ni­ties, and how impor­tant it’s for them to write a law.

And this is how the PACT Act came about. Uh, Joe Court­ney, the sec­ond dis­trict, has spent many, many years work­ing on Blue Water Act for, uh, Navy vet­er­ans. You also spent a lot of time on Agent Orange Fair­ness Act to remove the bar­ri­er for some of the pre­sump­tive ill­ness­es that were in place. So, but that start­ed with one vet­er­an and then doing the leg­work to go talk to the Amer­i­can Legion.

The Vet­er­ans of For­eign War, the Par­a­lyzed Vet­er­ans of Amer­i­ca, Viet­nam, vet­er­ans of Amer­i­ca, uh, there’s all dif­fer­ent types of orga­ni­za­tions that work togeth­er in most time, most of the time to get this leg­is­la­tion passed. So, they actu­al­ly have these peo­ple leg­isla­tive, um, lob­by­ists basi­cal­ly for the beat­en, you know, for the, the vet­er­ans to go talk to the sen­a­tors and con­gress­men in DC to let ’em know what’s important.

And if they think it’s not impor­tant, then it’s not gonna get passed. They need the sup­port of the ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions in order to be the past, not just the politi­cians. And it all comes down to mon­ey, who’s gonna pay for it.

I think it might go back a bit to what you said about some vet­er­ans being angry and just frus­trat­ed because of these bar­ri­ers. I think I had seen that a few months back when the bill actu­al­ly got delayed due to some pro­ce­dur­al issue they said.

and the same peo­ple that vot­ed ‘yes’, the first time did­n’t vote ‘yes’, the sec­ond time. And they did that cause of pol­i­tics. And when you’re deal­ing with vet­er­ans, it should­n’t be pol­i­tics, it should be bipar­ti­san. Does­n’t mat­ter what, if you’re Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat, you should, you know, vote on the bill in, in its mer­its, not on some­thing else that’s tick­ing you off.

And that’s basi­cal­ly what hap­pened. And then the same.  that, um, vot­ed against it three days lat­er, four days lat­er, what­ev­er it was vot­ed for, because they got flame spray by the veteran’s com­mu­ni­ty. And I’m sure you saw that.

And then they just want­ed to play pol­i­tics on anoth­er bill that they were work­ing on. And, uh, that had noth­ing to do with vet­er­ans and they were just play­ing games. With the West­ern lives, basi­cal­ly, so. Mm-hmm. , that’s why it was, uh, it was pret­ty young when that hap­pened. And, uh, what, what I see though, you know, logis­ti­cal­ly, you know, from here I served 31 years active duty in the military.

Okay. Um, most, most of us, while we’re active duty, we remain apo­lit­i­cal. We don’t care about, you know, you’re, You can’t talk about it. You think what you want to think, but you got­ta be able to, and that’s the way I am in this office. Also, I work at the plea­sure of Con­gress­man Court­ney, but I’m not run­ning around, you know, preach­ing one side or the oth­er because that’s not my job.

My job is to take care of vet­er­ans in this dis­trict. What does­n’t mat­ter if they’re Repub­li­can, they’re Democ­rats or what­ev­er, they’re a vet­er­an we’re gonna take care of, and that’s Joe Court­ney’s phi­los­o­phy. Does­n’t mat­ter. You know, your polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion is you elect­ed me, I’m here to take care of you, regard­less of that.

So my job as a vet­er­an is to take care of vet­er­ans. Um, what­ev­er the prob­lem may be, it’s just some of ’em are a lit­tle bit angri­er than the oth­er ones , and you just got­ta kind of talk ’em down with a calm voice and say, Hey, it’s okay. You know, we’ll fig­ure it out. I don’t know what you’ve run into in the past because pri­or to 2014 it was pret­ty ugly out there for vet­er­ans try­ing to get help, try­ing to get health­care, try­ing to get, you know, dis­abil­i­ty ben­e­fits. Um, a lot of civil­ians out there who nev­er served in the mil­i­tary think that vet­er­ans get health­care for free and they don’t pay for any­thing. You know, it’s not the case. You know, there’s lots of vet­er­ans that served and noth­ing hap­pened to ’em.

You know, phys­i­cal­ly they’re fine and they have a job, so they make a decent amount.  and now they try to go to the VA for health ben­e­fits and they say, no, you did­n’t get hurt and you make too much mon­ey so you can’t use the va. So that angers them cause they served, you know, but they can’t use the VA cause it’s for ser­vice con­nect­ed veterans.

Vet­er­ans that are injured or exposed to tox­ins, so on and so forth. Or they have a very low income, and I mean very low income, like almost pover­ty. So, what hap­pens is a lot of evic­tions when they retire, 65 years old and they’re on Medicare, they’re on social secu­ri­ty, and they have a very small pen­sion that they’re get from what­ev­er job they worked in their entire lives.

They may qual­i­fy then because their income is so low, so it’s ben­e­fi­cial for them to enroll in the VA then. But most of ’em, for the most part, they don’t use the VA because they don’t qualify.

So, um, but I will tell you that most vet­er­ans do have some type of ser­vice-con­nect­ed dis­abil­i­ty from their service.

You don’t go in the mil­i­tary at 18 years old and get out after four years, the same per­son you were when you went in. Um, some­thing’s gonna be dam­aged, whether it’s a body part, uh, or your hear­ing or your, you know, eye­sight or some­thing’s gonna go, you know, so yeah, that’s phys­i­cal in nature. It’s a phys­i­cal job, espe­cial­ly if you’re in combat.

Um, with regards to their strength and their, you know, all that stuff. They have to pass these tests, you know, not, not every­body can car­ry 80 pounds and grow cruis­ing around, you know?

And he’s 41 years old. He has a wife and two kids. He’s gone, you know, so who’s gonna take care of his fam­i­ly now that he’s gone? You know? And, uh, they have process­es in place to take care of the fam­i­ly. If that vet­er­an was deter­mined to have got­ten that can­cer from the burn pits, it’s gonna take care of those fam­i­ly members.

You know, not a lot of mon­ey, but enough maybe to pay their rent every month. I mean, that’s important.

Right now the Depart­ment of Veteran’s affairs med­ical cen­ters are doing screen­ings for vet­er­ans who report con­cerns about being exposed to tox­ins. Accord­ing to a press release from the VA ever since the pilot pro­gram began on Sep­tem­ber 6, there had been more than 19,000 vet­er­ans screened and found a 37 per­cent con­cern of expo­sure among those veterans.

The full imple­men­ta­tion of the PACT Act is set to start on Jan­u­ary 1, and it seems that the VA is going full steam ahead with its implementation.

The major con­cern how­ev­er is if the num­ber of vet­er­ans who apply will put strain on the struc­tures put in place to give them the ben­e­fits that they need.

Although the future of this bill remains to be seen, hav­ing spo­ken with these vets and hear­ing about their deter­mi­na­tion to help each oth­er and their com­mu­ni­ties. The PACT Act may have a ways to go, but you can count on vet­er­ans work­ing togeth­er to steer it in the right direction.

This is Mike Thomp­son, and this was the Atom­ic State.

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Civ­i­lized Assault