Noteboom The Law Firm

New Agent Orange Compensation Claims Being Paid

November 11, 2010 - With the mandatory 60-day review period expired, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has started to roll out checks to those Vietnam veterans who applied and qualified for compensation under the VA's new Agent Orange rules. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 Vietnam veterans could become eligible for VA compensation due to their various medical conditions brought on by exposure to Agent Orange while in Vietnam.

To receive the new Agent Orange compensation, these conditions must exist on the VA's presumptive disease list, which was recently expanded to include:

• Parkinson's Disease;
• B-cell (hairy cell) leukemia; and
• Ischemic heart disease.

The VA expected thousands of disability claims to be filed once the 3 new diseases were added. In an attempt to make the disability claims process run smoother than current VA claims processes do, the VA initiated a series of initiatives. These initiatives are to work on two levels: technological and decision making.

Although the VA is attempting to speed up, modernize, and ease their processes to handle the new surge of anticipated claims, payments will not be paid out all at once. Instead, they will roll out over several months as the VA irons out such details as effective dates of retroactive pay that have become issues with these 3 new additions to the presumptive disease list.