I would never try to put a dollar figure on the life and health of my fellow veterans, although for purposes of identifying a cost associated with a legislation, we have to do a head count. Exactly whose heads are we counting? The Agent Orange Act of 2009 actually represents several distinct groups of veterans, with a majority being Blue Water Navy (BWN) veterans who are currently suffering from disabilities associated with herbicide exposure from their time on active duty while in the offshore waters of Vietnam.
Blue Water Navy veterans include Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine personnel who served on a deep-water naval vessel offshore Vietnam between January 9, 1962 and May 7, 1975. Blue Water Navy personnel are a subset of the total Navy personnel who served in the Vietnam War. The Coast Guard and Marines represent an important but numerically insignificant portion of BWN. As is true with our troops who served on land, not all BWN personnel have been disabled due to dioxin poisoning, which is what Agent Orange is presumed to have done. There were other toxic chemicals used in several other types of herbicides and elsewhere that damaged the health of active duty personnel, but their effects remain unspecified or are included in the effects of Agent Orange dioxin contamination. Also in consideration are ground troops who served in the proximity of Vietnam: Thailand, Laos and Cambodia (TLC).
In order to get to the true BWN veteran head count we are looking for, we must know the following:
The distinction between Blue Water Navy and Brown Water Navy is fairly clear-cut, regardless of how confusing anyone cares to make it. It has only to do with the type of craft they served on and the basic purpose of their mission. Blue Water Navy was (and still is) comprised of ships that were designed to sail the deep waters of the open sea, facing all the perils of being many hundreds of miles from any type of land. Brown Water Navy was (and still is) comprised of boats specifically designed to navigate the shallow and narrow rivers and canals in the interior of a country. Brown Water Navy was ordered to deal with water traffic and inland situations from the coast line inward. At times, Brown Water Navy craft ventured to the offshore regions for short periods (particularly in search of ice cream from the gun line destroyers!), and Blue Water Navy sometimes entered the inland waterways when it was deep enough to accommodate the deeper draught of an ocean vessel, usually to get closer to a gunfire support mission. By crossing the coastline, Blue Water vessels did not "become" Brown Water vessels nor vice versa. And here is an easy distinction between a boat and a ship: A boat is small and can be loaded onto a ship, but not vice versa.
So what, one might ask, is so difficult about finding the number of Blue Water Navy personnel? Basically, no one single entity kept a reliable count of how many Naval personnel served in Vietnam. No one single entity kept a reliable count of how many Naval personnel received the Vietnam Service Medal (VSM), which (if we knew the count) would be nearly identical with the number of Naval, Coast Guard and Marine personnel who served in Vietnam. And here, the phrase "in Vietnam" has the common sense interpretation of "directly in the Vietnam War."
The next logical question would be: Why not? I assume the answer to that is: Because no one thought it was relevant data and records were not that well kept. Alternatively, any attempts to keep those records did not survive longer than a few years. So, over the intervening years, there have been many attempts, official and otherwise, to derive these numbers by conjecture, extrapolation, best-guess estimation, and so forth. The range of answers is vast, depending on the agenda of whoever was counting. Most sources fall back on the very unreliable numbers provided by the Census. The total number of Blue Water Naval personnel serving in Vietnam (which by common sense includes those who served in combat and combat support roles in the waters offshore) has ranged from 1.5 million or more to less than 500,000. The VA itself has used this range of numbers when the purpose suited them. VA and DoD numbers are purely estimates, and have changed over the years.
From our examination of a dozen or more estimates, we feel relatively certain that the total number of US Navy personnel was about 850,000 total, and the BWN represents about 550,000. We do not know for a fact that these are "The Right Numbers." I don't believe anyone knows "The Right Numbers." If they did, and if they could validate them with no uncertainty, we wouldn't have had the past 30-plus years to bat around our various estimates. In all this time, there's been no one that has stepped forward with the claim to have "The Right Numbers" who hasn't encountered equally valid alternative arguments for different numbers. And because of the arguments it fosters, each group with an estimate has stated their beliefs and sat back holding on to that numbers stubbornly clutched to their chests for their own agendas.
Here are the numbers that we consider to best represent the population of Vietnam veterans then and now.
I personally don't care what that number was. It is totally irrelevant to the task at hand. That task is to provide medical care and financial compensation to members of our armed forces who have suffered harm by means of any chemical, nuclear or biological agent used in warfare - regardless of how high that cost happens to be. The BWN veterans of Vietnam are just one of the groups of service men and women who suffer disabilities. Some of those groups are from 30 or more years ago. Some are from earlier times. Some of them are of much more recent times. And in the present and future, our armed forces personnel continuously face the risk of debilitating disease by contamination from these agents of war, or such agents that are released due to war. Whether that number be 3 or 3 million, this country must own up to the true costs of war and readily provide comfort from physical and psychological injuries our soldiers incur in the course of fighting our wars. Our warriors shouldn't have to fight any additional battles to obtain that care. If these United States cannot abide by this simple moral commitment, then we should either stop having wars or stop assuming there will be individuals who make the choice to sign up to fight for us, knowing they will not be cared for if injured or disabled.
The Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Association (BWNVVA) hasn't the slightest idea what "The Right Numbers" are. But we're confident enough in our projections to do two things:
Couched within the various caveats and explanations surrounding this presentation, I'm willing to put my name on the bottom line. What you will find below is a tool that can be used to tinker with this question of "What is the Real Cost of The Agent Orange Act of 2009?" If you don't like the numbers we use, download and use the spreadsheet to enter your own favorite numbers and watch how those changes affect the projected cost. Just remember, no cost is too high; but the majority of opinions can easily represent costs that are too low.
Here is the summary of the cost factors.
Our projection is that, over a 10 year period from 2010 to 2020, this legislation will cost approximately $2.1 Billion.
Here is our full spreadsheet estimate of what this bill might cost and why. We make several assumptions that need to be pointed out and explained. Those details are found as footnotes to the spreadsheet. A few things will be readily apparent as you review our estimates. It gives a projected life span of 10 more years to disabled Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans, which stretches the currently projected average life span of those individuals by 3 or 4 years. That would be nice if it happened. It *could* happen if these individuals start receiving service-connected medical care from the VA Health System. We don't subscribe to the concept of $300 hammers or $200 bed pans. We believe there are extra dollars in this estimate, so it might well be more than what is actually needed. These numbers represent compensation payments for new claims of living veterans without consideration for existing claims, refiled claims, retro-pay or other adjustments possible under VA regulations.
Try it Yourself. Download this spreadsheet and manipulate the parameter values as you see fit. This can be downloaded to your own machine and the variables changed. It is an MS Excel spreadsheet but easily opens with Open Office Calc (a free program at Open Office) as well as several other spreadsheet programs.
PLEASE NOTE : The columns that progress to the right represent years, which we know must end at some point. As soon as a column shows a negative number, there are no more veterans alive in this category. Any column to the right of that should be ignored and the #REF! simply means the program can't function because the negative numbers are meaningless. As soon as you see a negative number, you are in an invalid column, and your final cost number is found in the column immediately preceding. These projections indicate end-of-year totals. This spreadsheet is based on AVERAGES, and does not reflect any one single veteran. A specific veteran has a probability of longevity very near what is projected here. But nothing is specific to any single veteran.
When using this spreadsheet, you need to remember we are not dealing with or implying anything about "all Vietnam veterans" or "all Blue Water Navy veterans". We are only talking about those BWN vets who currently have a compensable disability due to herbicide exposure that is service-connected from the Vietnam War but who are currently receiving no medical treatment or financial compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs for those disabilities. If a member of the BWN class is currently receiving health care and compensation specifically for disabilities presumed to have been caused by herbicide agents, then they already fall within an existing component of the DVA budget and have no association with the costs of HR-2254/S-1939. If the BWN veteran is or should be receiving medical care or financial compensation due to Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, they also fall within an existing component of the DVA budget and have no association with the costs of HR-2254/S-1939.
You will notice that the projected life span of these BWN veterans never goes beyond 2020. You can increase the number of individuals, adjust the payments and percentages that recipients might receive, and what happens is the cost of the program between 2010 and 2020 changes, sometimes quite drastically. The annual death rate defines the current life span of these individuals. If the current average age of surviving BWN personnel is now, at the end of 2009, as 60 years old, this Table carries most of them to age 70. That is 4 years longer that the current average life span of all Vietnam veterans, which is 66 years old. Some modern medical miracle may come forth soon to bring about such a scenario of prolonged life span. For comparison, it is reported that Australian Vietnam War veterans are said to have an average life span closer to 56 years old.
No one can say we are selling this Bill short just to get it passed quickly. I expect every Senator and Representative who votes to support this Bill to do so with their eyes wide open, knowing that there are no hidden costs, with the possibility that whatever cost they are authorizing is most likely on the high side.
Just think! A Congressional budget that might be under-spent! We should also consider the impact these facts have on the Social Security fund. With the overall Vietnam veteran population dying off at such an early age, they will be leaving behind many thousands of dollars they otherwise would have drawn out as Social Security payments. Consider that their last gift to a grateful nation.
I sincerely hope you find this useful.
John Paul Rossie, Executive Director
Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Association (BWNVVA)
www.bluewaternavy.org
navy(at)bluewaternavy.org
P.O. Box 1035
Littleton, CO 80160-1035
On The Veteran's Stimulus Package
Sue Belanger, the BWNVVA Director of Special Projects, has submitted the following information for consideration.
This bill, once passed, would extend an economic stimulus plan in the several ways: