Dollar Deep
Agent Orange Will Cost The United States $42 Billion Over Ten Years
Not only does the herbicide/chemical weapon Agent Orange cause birth flaws for Vietnamese children, it also has hurt more than one million United States veterans. Acute peripheral neuropathy, soft tissue sarcoma and Hodgkin’s lymphoma are just a few of the conditions soldiers who were either enlisted or chosen to serve came home with. In two months, approximately 270,000 Vietnam War veterans – more than a quarter of the a million-plus receiving disability checks, reports the Washington Post – are to be compensated for diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson’s and certain types of leukemia under a new rule. Within the next ten years, the American taxpayers will have to cover a lot to support this. Around forty two billion dollars will be spent on it. Article resource – Agent Orange will cost America $42 billion over 10 years by Personal Money Store
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Agent Orange causes everything from diabetes to erectile dysfunction
The Department of veterans’ Affairs reports on which medical condition is most common from Agent Orange. It really ended up being diabetes. Agent Orange also has erectile dysfunction tied to it now. Normally this would be attributed to age however veterans are getting extra compensation for it. Former Wyoming Republican senator and current chairman of President Obama’s deficit commission, Alan Simpson, has said such compensation flies in the face of commitments to control federal spending.
“The irony (is) that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess,” he said.
Also, Sen. Daniel K Akaka (D-Hawaii) who is the chairman of Veterans’ Affairs Committee thinks these are “presumptive conditions” that working class are now paying for. The Post found an email stating Alkaka’s plans to be in a hearing on “what changes Congress and also the VA may need for making to existing law and policy,” around September 23.
Too much VA spending
The Department of Veterans’ Affairs might end up paying too much for Vietnam veterans with diabetes, says the Associated Press. The VA’s numbers for how much would be paid for diabetes per year are shown to be much higher than independent calculations depending on VA records that show $850 million a year being enough. Considering the VA spends $34 billion a year on disability benefits for American veterans wars, the forty two billion dollars increase over the next 10 years is an earth-shattering leap.
Really there is some ‘Credible evidence for association’
Victoria Anne Cassano is the Veterans’ Health Administration Director of Radiation and Physical Exposures. She explains that there was a federal law created on Agent Orange in 1991 saying that chemical agents and afflictions do have a correlation with Agent Orange “if the credible evidence for the association is equal to or outweighs the credible evidence against the association.” It is not hard to prove that. The Post reports this. Cassano asks, “Does it make you take a deep breath? Does it give you pause? Yes. But you still do what you think is the right thing to do.”
U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs
publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange/diseases.asp
Washington Post
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/31/AR2010083106819.html
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange
The children of Agent Orange, 2008 (WARNING: Disturbing content)
youtube.com/watch?v=9zay0zcC0K4
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