The road to implementing the largest health care and benefit expansion in Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) history hinged on one crucial fact: millions of veterans were putting boots on the ground for the war on terrorism, and they were coming home sick.
“For years, we have been surveying the warriors in our community,” said Brian Dempsey, director of government affairs for Wounded Warrior Project. “We learned in our 2019 survey that about seven in 10 warriors from the post-9/11 era of service were certain that they had been exposed to hazardous substances.”
But according to congressional testimony by then-VA Deputy Executive Director Laurine Carson in 2020, VA denied 78% of disability claims by veterans that were alleged to have been caused by burn pits since 2007.
Starting in 2019, Wounded Warrior Project spearheaded a coalition of more than 60 veterans service organizations known as TEAM (Toxic Exposure in the American Military) with the intention of legislatively addressing these deficiencies at VA. The result was the passage of the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022, known widely as the PACT Act.
The PACT Act expands and extends eligibility for VA health care for veterans with toxic exposures from the Vietnam, Gulf War, and post-9/11 eras. It also adds 23 presumptive conditions and five new presumptive locations for toxic exposures, as well as requiring VA to provide a toxic exposure screening to every veteran enrolled in VA health care.
Wounded Warrior Project has been pleased with the implementation of the law, considering the VA’s outreach, responsiveness, and transparency generally positive.
“The agencies demonstrated a really strong commitment to collaboration,” Dempsey said. “They worked closely with veteran service organizations to identify any pain points in the rollout of the new laws, then worked collaboratively to find solutions to them.”
Recent VA data shows that since the passage of the PACT Act, VA has completed more than 2.7 million related claims, and 73% of them have been approved. More than 500,000 new veterans have enrolled in VA health care since the law was passed, and within that group, three-quarters are being placed in the highest priority group for care. Over 90% of veteran patients report positive trust scores in their PACT Act-related care, and online resources the VA provides about the law have been viewed more than 30 million times.
Dempsey also said he thinks the PACT Act has helped transform the culture of how patients and providers talk about toxic exposure, noting that more than 6 million veterans have completed toxic exposure screenings since the bill’s passage.
“I think it’s a really unprecedented level of outreach and prevention that’s going on,” he said.
For service members beginning the transition out of the military, Wounded Warrior Project encourages getting all medical and service records in order prior to separation, so the process of connecting to care and benefits will go smoothly.
“Veterans don’t need to pay someone to assist them with their benefits,” Dempsey said. “There are many VSOs like ours who provide the service at no cost. But veterans can also take steps to be their own best advocates in the process.”
For more information, or to see if you’re eligible for PACT Act-related benefits, click here. To read the rest of our Veteran Transition Toolkit, click here.
