Hundreds of thousands of veterans have received additional benefits in the past year after President Joe Biden signed legislation expanding coverage for conditions connected to burn pits that were used to destroy trash and potentially toxic materials.
“The VA could have slow rolled it to make their job easier,” said Allison Jaslow, a former Army captain who leads the advocacy organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “But to their credit, they didn’t.”
Cole Lyle, a 33-year-old former Marine corporal in Alexandria, Virginia, who leads the advocacy organization Mission Roll Call, made a similar decision. “I was getting barraged by Jon Stewart on Twitter and a couple other folks, and I thought, I really ought to file,” he said. The pressure campaign worked, and Congress passed the measure. It was a bipartisan success but also a personal victory for Biden, who has long believed that his eldest son, Beau, developedfrom serving near burn pits in Iraq as a captain in the Delaware Army National Guard.
The legislation authorized the VA to expand its facilities through 31 leases, and it is pursuing them in 19 states. VA employees can now receive higher bonuses and more help with student loans than before. There are additional incentives for recruitment, retention and relocation. Since then it has been a blur of treatments, including months of grueling chemotherapy — “for the last three weeks I was like a zombie,” she said — and a recent mastectomy. Bussiere, who lives in Providence, Rhode Island, is starting radiation and expects to be taking pills for years to come.
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