Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- May 11, 1998
Veterans fight for medical benefits related to smoking
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The nation's largest veterans groups have joined forces to fight a Clinton administration effort -- approved by the Senate last month with little fanfare -- to eliminate veterans' medical compensation benefits for smoking-related illnesses.
Veterans groups are incensed that the Senate's action would use the funding that will be lost to ailing veterans -- an estimated $10.5 billion over five years -- to help finance a $217 billion highway and mass-transit bill, recently passed by the House.
"This money belongs to the veterans. It shouldn't be used to fund transportation pork. ... This is election-year politics at its worst," said Bill Warfield, deputy director of government relations for the Vietnam Veterans of America.
Said Phil Budahn, spokesman for the American Legion, the largest veterans organization: "I don't understand how anyone can take money from sick people and put it for highways. And I especially don't understand how anyone can take money from sick veterans and use it for highways."
The issue has caused a split among some top Senate Republicans. The Budget Committee, chaired by Sen. Pete V. Domenici, New Mexico Republican, approved the proposal by the Veterans' Affairs Department to end benefits for smoking-related ailments in fiscal 1999. It was that panel that earmarked the savings for highway improvements.
However, Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, says he believes that "was the wrong way to go" and will fight to restore the funds.
For a few short minutes on April 2, Mr. Specter and Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, ranking Democrat on the Veterans' Affairs panel, believed they had succeeded in convincing the Senate to require the VA to continue providing benefits for smoking-related problems.
The Senate that day voted 98-0 to preserve those benefits. But in what Anthony G. Jordan, national commander of the American Legion, described as a "parliamentary sleight-of-hand," just minutes later senators "voted 52-46 to eliminate them."
"This was a master stroke of stealth bombing by Domenici and his troops," said Mr. Warfield of the Vietnam Veterans of America. He noted that the second vote called for a one-year study to determine the future of smoking-related VA benefits but recommended that the money be used to pay for highway projects in the meantime.
The two votes, Mr. Warfield said, allow senators on the campaign trail to say they supported retention of the benefits, even if they later switched course.
The House has not yet acted on the matter. Leaders of veterans organizations want a meeting with Speaker Newt Gingrich to plead their case, Mr. Warfield said.
Approximately 7,400 veterans have filed claims for VA benefits since January 1993, when the VA general counsel ruled that disability payments, survivors payments and medical care can go to veterans who started smoking when they were in the military and fell ill from a tobacco-related illness after returning to civilian life.
"But the VA did not implement the program for four years," said the American Legion's Mr. Budahn. That changed, he said, in May 1997, when a top VA physician "said nicotine addiction was a disease, and he reaffirmed the [compensation] program." Another ruling later that year by the VA general counsel's office identified circumstances in which smoking-related maladies could qualify for benefits.
After those opinions, Mr. Budahn said, the VA "started looking at 3,000 of the 7,400 claims." He said the department approved fewer than 300 of the 3,000 claims it reviewed. "The 300 who were approved presumably will be able to keep their benefits," he said but noted there would be no further beneficiaries if the Senate-passed budget resolution wins approval in the House.
Other veterans groups opposing plans to abolish smoking-related illnesses as conditions that qualify as "service-connected" claims include the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Vietnam Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Amvets, Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A. Inc., and Blinded Veterans Association.
In a letter circulating on Capitol Hill, leaders of six of those groups charge that the Defense Department is to blame for many veterans becoming addicted to cigarettes, and they argue smoking-related disorders should qualify as service-connected disabilities.
"Indeed, the United States government was responsible for the introduction of tobacco to many, if not most, of our sons and daughters in uniform," leaders of the six veterans groups wrote in their letter to members of Congress.
"The Department of Defense, our country's largest single distributor of cigarettes, provided free cigarettes to [service] members and made smoking breaks the standard and, most often, the sole reward for completion of training exercises and other military tasks. Consequently, smoking among veterans is more prevalent than among our population generally," the veterans argued.
But Ken McKinnon, spokesman for the Veterans Affairs Department, says that's not grounds for requiring the VA to continue paying medical, disability and survivors' benefits for smoking-related disorders. "All services gave out cigarettes during World War II. So did the Red Cross," Mr. McKinnon said.
"It was something given them, but we disagree that it's government's responsibility to pay for all the sins of smoking. ... We do not believe the compensation system was developed to service-connected conditions so far removed from military service," he said.
Mr. McKinnon stressed that the VA is not behind any efforts to transfer the money normally allocated to treat smoking-related ailments from the VA budget to transportation projects. He said the VA actually believes the savings will be $17 billion over five years. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it will be $10.5 billion.
"We proposed using the [fiscal] 1999 money for increased GI benefits and for smoking-cessation programs. We've asked for the money" to remain in the VA budget, he said.
Mr. Specter, Mr. Warfield, and others involved in the struggle to preserve VA benefits for veterans with "service-connected" illnesses linked to smoking say that if they lose that fight, they at least want the money to stay in the VA budget.
But a Senate Budget Committee aide, who asked not to be identified, challenged veterans' claims that the VA needs the money. The aide noted that last year Congress gave the veterans' health care system an extra $1.2 billion in funding. "In fact, the VA could not use all the available funds," she said.
She added that the Senate-passed fiscal 1999 Budget Resolution provides almost $700 million more for the VA than was contained in last year's budget.Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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