NATION : Vet Disability Rules to Be Revamped
Bowing to a recent federal court ruling, the government today moved to revamp rules that have prevented 34,000 veterans from obtaining disability benefits for exposure to the defoliant “Agent Orange.”
Proposed new rules published for public comment would authorize the Veterans Affairs Department to award disability benefits when there was reasonable doubt as to whether a particular disease was statistically linked to exposure.
The department set an Aug. 17 deadline for comments, and it said it would try to have final rules in place by Oct. 1.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Edward J. Derwinski ordered the new rules in May after a federal judge in San Francisco threw out the existing rules, concluding that they were too restrictive.
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