From: PATBNAAV@aol.com
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999
Subject: Re: Portland Calling
To: pdxavets@aracnet.com
From the Stars and Stripes 11-22 - 12-5, 1999
This will update my latest to you--
The Veterans Millennium Health Care and Benefits Act would provide for
improved long-term care and other reforms of the VA health care system, new
veterans cemeteries, speedier construction of the national World War !!
Memorial and an array of enhanced veterans benefits.
The amended H.R. 2116 combines provisions from the health care and
benefits bills passed by the House earlier this year. A 2.4 percent Cost of
Living Adjustment (COLA) for disability compensation and survivors benefits
was passed by the House the previous week. Final Senate passage of both the
amended H.R. 2116 and COLA is expected soon (this is a little outdated since
Congress adjourned until the first of the new year). The President is
expected to sign both measures.
The health provisions would improve acccess to long-term care for the
most severely disabled veterans and expand the VA's obligation to provide
alternatives to nursing home care; would authorize the VA to pay reasonable
emergency care costs for veterans who obtain their general medicare care from
the VA. It would establish new authority for VA to provide care to
TRICARE-eligible military retirees and Purple Heart recipients who otherwise
lack priority for VA care.
It is likely that construction of the World War !! Memorial can begin
next year; would direct the VA secretary to obligate Advance Planning Funds
for six new national veterans cemeteries.
In addition, H.R. 2116 makes surviving spouses of former prisoners of war
who die with a service-connected disability (rated totally disabling at least
one year before death) eligible for DIC payments. The package also restores
CHAMPVA medical care, education and housing loans to surviving spouses
following termination of a subsequent marriage. Those benefits would be
added to the DIC eligibility already restored by legislation enacted in 1998.
It would add bronchiolo-alveolar carcinoma, a rare form of lung cancer not
associated with tobacco use, to the list of diseases presumed to be
service-connected for certain radiation-exposed veterans. So we now have 16
cancers in P.L. 100-321.
Another provision would extend until 2007 the housing loan program for
members of the Reserves and National Guard who serve at least six years; also
housing benefits for homeless veterans administered by the Labor Department.
Sorry to say, that other than the addition of bronchiolo-alveolar
carcinoma to P.L. 100-321, there are no other goodies for the avets.
Hopefully, the new Congress will be more generous. I did ask one of the
staffers in Lane Evans Office why that particular lung cancer was selected
(other than the fact that Rep. Chris Smith had introduced it every year for
the past 10 years), and was told that it is such a rare cancer that they
don't expect too many requests for benefits for that type of lung cancer,
hence, it won't cost the government much. 'Twas ever thus.
PAT BROUDY
Legislative Advisor
Update on the 5 Series Study
I'm quoting from Jay Brady's paper delivered to the
National Academy of Sciences re: the 5-Series prepublication document.
...The major point is, however, that the current "five-series" committee
is devoid of any members who are experts on how atomic veterans were exposed,
what type of doses occurred, and total amount of doses received, with the
result that the committee has not been aware of groups of participants that
were more at risk and thus, do not know where to look for "clusters" of both
morbidity and mortality possibly caused by exposure to nuclear radiations.
The current "five series" report, in examining statistically excessive
amounts of cancer mortality covering all five series of tests, defeats its
own purpose of detecting excess cancers in meaningful groups by attempting to
obtain more statistical power over all participants in all five series, with
overall results that are meaningless.
For example, one need only look as far as BEIR V to note that skin
cancers may occur in excess only in fair-skinned persons exposed to both high
levels of nuclelar radiation dose and ultraviolet rays from the sun. Thus,
if one includes persons not fair-skinned in a study to get more "statistical
power," one may fail to detect the excess skin cancers. Similarly, if all
U.S. Navy personnel on all ships exposed to fallout are included in a study,
regardless of whether they were in the "deck gang," who spent most of their
work time above deck, or were part of the "engineer gang," who spent most of
their work time below deck, unexposed to radioactive fallout, then one might
gain statistical power at the expense of not detecting excess cancers which
may actually exist in the "above deck" gang, particularly the fair-skinned
persons noted above.
Persons experienced in nuclear testing could help the current five-series
study committee present their data in a more meaningful manner. As it stands
now, knowledgeable persons are not convinced that the latest MFUA five-series
is of much more value than the last flawed study. We, meaning persons
concerned from the atomic veterans' perspective and certainly not from the
government perspective of simply denying any connection between nuclear
testing radiation exposure and illnesses of atomic veterans, do not want this
five-series study to use "statistical power" to cover up clusters of
illnesses in atomic veterans possibly caused by radiation exposure. Please
give us a little time to study the prepublication report on this five-series
study and provide you with some adivce such as the specific ships or units
that need to be looked at more closely...
PAT BROUDY
Legislative Advisor