A milestone has been reached for the PACT Act, which has been called the most significant expansion of veterans' health care in 30 years.
Veterans and survivors have now submitted 500,000 PACT Act-related claims for illnesses they say resulted from toxic exposure.
“I'd say it validates that there are many veterans who are waiting to get care for toxic exposure,” said Allison Jaslow, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “All they needed was permission.”
The White House said last summer, when the PACT Act became law, that this will help more than 5 million veterans.
The PACT Act expands care to veterans exposed to toxins during their service.
Burn pits used at U.S. bases during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were blamed for illnesses, including cancers, and brought this issue to the forefront. But pre-9/11 veterans who suffered toxic exposure are also covered under the PACT Act.
Darrell Owens, director of government relations at America's Warrior Partnership, said these burn pits exposed service members to a "vicious stew" of smoke.
The burn pits were used at forward-operating bases as a way of disposing of trash.
"So, everything that was garbage, whether it was waste, food, batteries, spare parts, extra uniforms, sewage, all that's being dumped into the pit and mixed with kerosene and lit on fire," he described.
Jaslow, an Iraq War veteran, said she was deployed near the burn pit at "Camp Trashcan."
"The smoke felt as though it had toxins in it, and it was really thick," she said. "It would settle into our encampment in a way that had everybody concerned for the entire time we were deployed."
Owens said health cases related to toxic exposure are complex, and for a long time there were questions about whether the burn pits and other service-related exposures were directly linked to illnesses that sometimes presented themselves years later.
The PACT Act expanded the "presumptive conditions" that qualify a veteran for Veterans Affairs benefits based on their exposure. They don’t have to prove that their service caused the condition.
A variety of cancers and other illnesses, including post-service asthma, bronchitis and emphysema, are now presumptive conditions from toxic exposure.
President Joe Biden said in a statement that the PACT Act is part of the nation’s "sacred obligation to care for America’s veterans and their families."
The VA began incorporating toxic-exposure screenings last fall for every veteran enrolled in VA health care. To date, 3 million veterans have gotten those screenings.
The VA says total enrollees for health care are up since the passage of the PACT Act, outpacing the previous year by around 30,000.
Owens said there’s been some confusion around the rollout, but he thinks the VA has the capacity to care for the new patients.
Jaslow praised the VA for actively promoting these new benefits.
“I'm the first to have some fair criticisms of the VA, but I think they've done probably as best as you could expect a very large bureaucracy to do in this instance,” Jaslow said.
She said she’s concerned that the VA will let its already-sizable claims backlog grow, though she said it’s no longer at the “crisis levels” the VA experienced a decade ago.
The VA now has about 215,000 claims in its backlog, down from over 600,000 in 2013.
Owens called the half-million PACT Act claims a “good start,” but he thinks there are a lot of former service members who aren’t yet getting the help they need.
“It is a big expansion of authority for the VA to be able to finally come out and take care of this stuff, but truthfully, it's been way too long in the process to get there,” Owens said.
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