Veterans check in to a PACT Act informational event put on by the VA Long Beach Healthcare System. (VA Long Beach Healthcare System via Facebook) The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that "potentially millions" more veterans or their survivors could be eligible to receive health care or financial compensation for toxic exposure-related medical conditions newly considered presumptive under the PACT Act , said Steve Miska, PACT Act transitional executive director.
The law’s presumptive aspect "gives us the opportunity to automatically assume that, by virtue of a veteran having this condition, it must be due to their service," Miska told Military.com. "That is a game changer in terms of how veterans historically have had to file a claim" for conditions now covered by the PACT Act: "Not only did they have to prove that those conditions were manifesting, but they also had to prove the service connection."
The law added what Miska described as 23 new "buckets of conditions," amounting to more than 330 medical conditions altogether. Some of the buckets contain, for example, a number of related types of cancers.
Whereas in the past, the VA approved about 25% of claims related to burn pit exposures, the rate was about 78.6% for PACT Act claims in the first year, Miska said.
The PACT Act presumes a service connection — provided the veteran served in a certain place at a certain time — for the following conditions related to toxic exposures from burn pits, contaminated water at Marine Corps bases in North Carolina, radiation, and the Vietnam-era chemical defoliant, Agent Orange. Burn Pit Presumptive Conditions
To be eligible for PACT Act compensation for exposure to burn pits or other toxins, veterans must have served at some point since Aug. 2, 1990, on the ground or in the airspace above Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, United Arab Emirates, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Oman, the neutral zone between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea; or since Sept. 11, 2001, on the ground or in the airspace above Afghanistan, Djibouti, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, […]

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