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Agent Orange cases may cost billions more

01.09.10

More Vietnam veterans are being compensated for diabetes than for any other malady, including post-traumatic stress disorder, hearing loss or general wounds.

Tens of thousands of other claims for common ailments of age - erectile dysfunction among them - are getting paid as well because of a possible link, direct or indirect, to Agent Orange.

And taxpayers may soon be responsible for even more: VA said Monday that it will add heart disease, Parkinson's disease and certain types of leukemia to the list of conditions that might be connected to Agent Orange. The agency estimates that the new rules, which will go into effect in two months unless Congress intervenes, will cost $42 billion over the next 10 years.

Former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) said Tuesday that such a system seems contrary to efforts to control federal spending. "The irony [is] that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess," said Simpson, an Army veteran who once led the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee. He is the co-chairman of President Obama's deficit commission.

Source: Washington Post