PACT Act will allow veterans to seek treatment

Aug. 4—ASHTABULA — The U.S. Senate passed the PACT Act on Tuesday, bringing the bill one step closer to becoming law.

According to a press release from the White House, the bill creates a new process for determining presumptive exposure and service connection for a number of chronic conditions, which may be difficult for veterans to prove on an individual basis. It also removes the need to prove a service connection for 23 specific conditions, greatly reducing the need for paperwork and exams.

The press release stated Biden looks forward to signing the bill.

Benjamin Schwartfigure, director of the Ashtabula County Veterans Service Commission, said the passage of the bill will allow veterans to receive treatment from the VA for conditions they have been suffering from for a long time, and that were previously not recognized.

"The primary responsibility of this office is to get the applications put together, the medical evidence, to support the applications submitted to the VA, so the VA can in turn, hopefully award the veteran with a rating that would allow the VA to care for that ailment, whatever it is," Schwartfigure said.

The VA was previously not recognizing a number of ailments, he said.

"Sinusitis asthma, a lot of different cancers, the different things that are now opened up to the veterans, that many of them claimed in the past and been denied, will now be able to be reopened, and their effective dates hopefully impacted to where they could see a lump sum compensation as well as the medical care that they've long needed and deserved," Schwartfigure said.

Most of the claims the Ashtabula County Veterans Service Commission has processed have been related to the Vietnam era and Agent Orange.

"We have had claims be denied for sinusitis and for asthma, associated exposures where they weren't acknowledged as of yet," Schwartfigure said. "Those things will be brought back to bear."

Previously, veterans had to prove via medical evidence they were impacted by Agent Orange or a burn pit.

"What this PACT (Act) does is it creates presumptives, which means that the VA presumes that, because you were in this location, your conditions are tied to it," Schwartfigure said. "It removes all of the examinations and everything else. It does remove a lot of paperwork and a lot of red tape."

Some of these exposures took place 50 years ago.

"So you have to convince the VA that everything in that gap of 50 years, that you did out of service, didn't contribute to or wasn't the underlying cause of your issues today," Schwartfigure said.

Once the bill is signed into law, the Veterans Service Commission will start advertising and reaching out to veterans to share information about how coverage has changed

"This is stuff that should have been acknowledged and addressed a long, long time ago," Schwartfigure said. "And while some of these vets may see large, lump sum dollars, that doesn't take away the years and years of suffering they've gone through, and the lack of acknowledgement. So it's time that these guys start getting the recognition from the healthcare system that they should have been given all along."