The Department of Veterans Affairs should be concerned about the lack of input from veterans and family members in decisions related to the PACT Act, as well as the absence of strong scientific processes to determine new presumptive conditions, analysts with a California-based think tank said Tuesday in a new report.
But the VA could find potential fixes in legislation passed to aid 9/11 responders and survivors who were exposed to environmental hazards after the terrorist attacks in 2001, Rand Corp. said in the report. Those earlier laws included beneficiaries in decisions and mandated robust research.
The PACT Act expanded VA health care benefits for millions of veterans who deployed overseas, and it designated nearly two dozen categories of illnesses as connected to military service, giving ill veterans expedited access to disability claims compensation.
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The law also directed the VA to establish criteria for determining which conditions should automatically be considered linked to military service, and it funded new health and exposure research studies at the department.
It is those requirements that Rand researcher Ramya Chari and her colleagues say the VA should pay closer attention to. And to do that, VA officials should look to the legislative precedent set in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade…
