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Bill ‘a big step forward’ for ailing Lejeune vets, families
President Barack Obama
signed a bipartisan bill Monday
that, for the first time, offers
veterans and family members
government-funded hospitalization
and medical services for 15
specific ailments presumed linked
to drinking water contamination
at Camp Lejeune, N.C., over 31
years, ending in 1987.
The bill has several controversial
features, including a mandate
that the Department of Veterans
Affairs, rather than the military
and its TRICARE program, provide
the care. The estimated cost
for the first five years is $162 million
to treat several thousand victims
who are expected to qualify.
To be eligible, patients must
show they spent at least 30 days
at Lejeune from Jan. 1, 1957, to
Dec. 31, 1987, or they were in utero
during that period with mothers
residing on base. They also
must have one or more of the following:
cancer of the esophagus,
Tom
Philpott
lung, breast, bladder
or kidney;
leukemia; multiple
myeloma;
myleodysplasic
syndromes;
renal toxicity;
hepatic steatosis;
female infertility;
miscarriage;
scleroderma;
neurobehavioral
effects or non-Hodgkin’s
lymphoma.
Family members of veterans
also must show they have exhausted
all other possible claims
or remedies available against
other parties for payment of care,
including employer or family
health insurance plans.
Up to 1 million Marines and
family members assigned to
Lejeune could have been exposed
to contaminated water, the Agency
for Toxic Substances and Disease
Registry estimates. Some
of these families for years have
blamed cancers, rare diseases,
birth defects and early deaths on
drinking water fouled by known
carcinogens, including trichloroethylene,
benzene and vinyl
chloride — poisons they say were
ignored for years by base officials.
After years of fighting the Navy
Department, organizing fellow
victims and lobbying Congress,
advocates including retired Marine
Corps Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger
see only a partial victory
in the enactment of the Honoring
America’s Veterans and Caring
for Camp Lejeune Families Act
of 2012.
The short title for the portion
of the law dealing with Lejeune
families is the Janey Ensminger
Act. It honors Ensminger and his
daughter who, at died in 1985 at
age 9 from acute lymphoblastic
leukemia, a rare ailment linked
to the toxins found in water at
Lejeune.
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Victims and families don’t fully
understand yet what Congress
has passed, Ensminger said in
a phone interview. But they do
know “this bill is a big step forward.
It’s the first step in achieving
justice.”
He credited Sen. Richard Burr
and Rep. Brad Miller of North
Carolina for shaping a bill that
could clear Congress.
One major hurdle was getting
Congress to act before completion
of ongoing scientific studies
that are expected to show more
precisely levels of contamination
and populations exposed. Another
hurdle was finding budget dollars
to provide VA medical services to
a new population of veterans and
family members.
As it flails to address the debt
crisis, Congress isn’t approving
new entitlement spending.
So money must be taken from
existing programs. Burr last
year pushed through the Senate
Veterans Affairs Committee
a similar Lejeune victims’ bill.
But he sought to fund by cutting
appropriations for military
commissaries, sharply lowering
grocery shopper discounts. Even
Ensminger opposed that move,
arguing that a prized military
benefit shouldn’t be gutted to care
for those harmed by serving their
country.
The law signed this week
covers health care for Lejeune
victims by extending by one year
higher fees veterans are paying to
use the VA home loan guarantee
program. Active-duty members
and veterans who seek a nomoney-down
VA home loan, for
example, pay a funding fee today
that equals to 2.15 percent on the
value of the loan. That fee was set
to drop to 1.4 percent Oct. 1, 2016.
The new law extends the higher
fee until Oct. 1, 2017.
See bill page 11
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Similar one-year extensions
will keep higher fees
in place on all types of VA
home loans. Congress set
them in the first place to pay
for new VA benefits. It has
extended them routinely to
pay for more new services.
Several veterans’ service
organizations had a
more important reason to
withhold their support for
the Lejeune bill. They see
a dangerous precedent in
saddling the VA with the
cost of caring for ill family
members.
“We certainly support the
government’s responsibility
to take care of dependents
harmed while living on
military bases by environmental
or toxic hazards,”
said Joseph Violante, legislative
director for Disabled
American Veterans. “But
we believe it shouldn’t be
through VA, especially with
TRICARE (offering) insurance
where they can go anywhere
they want.”
Until now, VA has offered
private sector health
care only to dependents
of veterans who are 100-
percent disabled through
the CHAMPVA. Program.
The new law could swamp
CHAMPVA with victims
from Lejeune, Violante said.
But they could be followed
by victims of contaminated
air at Naval Air Facility
Atsugi, Japan, victims of environmental
hazards found
at Fort McClellan, Ala., and
at many other problem
bases, he said.
“We already get chewed
out by Congress that VA
funding has increased
exponentially over the last
10 years and they can’t continue
to do that,” Violante
said. Now, he said, “they are
opening the door for more
people to come in, and then
telling us they don’t have
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the money to fund us at the
rate we need to be funded.
This puts us into a terrible
situation. We’ll be rationing
health care here soon.”
Ensminger also objected
to making VA the first payer,
calling it the law’s biggest
flaw. He fought to have the
Department of Defense
pick up the tab. It was the
military that caused so
many families to be exposed
to carcinogens for so long.
The armed services committees
oversee TRICARE
and have resisted legislation
that would have the
military health care cover
the Lejeune victims, partly
because studies ordered on
levels of exposure and the
populations likely harmed
haven’t been completed yet.
The law doesn’t set a
deadline for VA to start
providing medical services
to Lejeune victims. It could
take months to write the
regulations.
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