John Alberghini, like many of his fellow veterans, was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. His friend, Ed Mishard, was exposed, too.
“We sprayed it out of our helicopter,” Mishard said.
“Right on me,” Alberghini replied, laughing.
The symptoms of exposure to Agent Orange, a herbicide used by the U.S. military as a defoliant during the Vietnam War, are varied. There’s an increased risk of cancers, including bladder cancer and prostate cancer, as well as Type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and hypertension. Many of those exposed experience neuropathy, a tingling and numbness in the hands and feet.
Mishard and Alberghini last week were sitting down with some friends, all fellow veterans, at a local fast food restaurant in Monroe. Many, if not all of those conditions, were present.
“It doesn’t go away. It stays in your system. It could be dormant for years,” said Pat Buzzeo, sitting at the head of the table.
“One of my buddies, I was with him over there, he died, from the Agent Orange, he got blood cancer. Some people get it. Some people don’t,” Alberghini said. “I always call Agent Orange a sniper. It sits up in there, you never know if you’re going to get your head blown off.”
The group gets together regularly as part of an organization called Hooks for Heroes. It gets them out fishing and to other events that help veterans, many of them disabled or homeless. Much of the conversation around the table Friday centered around health care, and their fears for the future.
The VA may be bracing for as many as 83,000 layoffs, according to reporting in Government Executive, a news site focused on government employment issues, though VA spokesman Peter Kasperowicz said by email that those cuts haven’t happened yet.
The “VA has set up a structure to begin the planning process for reforming the department, but has not made any personnel changes yet,” he said. “VA will run through a deliberative process and find ways to improve care and benefits for veterans without cutting care and benefits for veterans.”
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., ranking member on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, held a so-called “shadow hearing” last week to hear from VA employees who had already lost their jobs. By some estimates, as many as 30% of staff at the agency are veterans themselves.
“These firings have disproportionately affected our VA and veterans’ workforce, and the harm to them individually will become painfully clear today,” Blumenthal said. “They have suffered from uncertainty, from financial distress, from emotional hardship, in ways that I think Elon Musk and Donald Trump need to understand.”
Health care changes
Alberghini and Mishard both said that when they got back home after the war, health care for veterans was not very well organized. You’d show up for your appointment at the VA and wait. Then, when 4 p.m. rolled around, they’d be told, “go home, come back tomorrow.”
“And I had a scheduled appointment,” Mishard said. “That’s how bad it was back in early ’70s. But nowadays it’s better.”
Ken Wielk, sitting across the table from Alberghini, had a similar experience.
“When I came home on leave, I was sick. So, my father says, ‘Why don’t you just go to the VA, see what they can do for it,’” he said. “I went to the VA because I was the closest, in my mind, military installation. I get there, I spent all day there just to get an antibiotic.”
Nowadays, the group agreed, it’s different.
“Yesterday, I was at the VA, and I had a regular appointment at neurology. I showed them something on my back, right? The doctor was, within five minutes, calling two dermatologists,” said Buzzeo who is also Hooks for Heroes president. “He got me a blood test and gave me a prescription. All within an hour, and you don’t get that on the outside.”
Now, with a large number of anticipated cuts to the VA, the group is concerned that they might go back to the old days, when getting health care was difficult at the VA.
The agency itself, however, said it’s not going to cut medical staff.
“We’re not talking about reducing medical staff or claims processors; we’re talking about reducing bureaucracy and inefficiencies that are getting in the way of customer convenience and service to veterans,” Kasperowicz said.
That was not much of a consolation to Mishard, though, who said losing any staff can’t be a good thing.
“They need more people,” he said. “They’re understaffed as it is.”
The group agreed, as Alberghini put it, that “there’s a lot of fat when I go to hospitals,” where efficiencies could be made. But, at the same time, VA doctors tend to spend more time with their patients than other doctors, often 30 minutes or more if needed. There is a level of personal attention the veterans at the table were concerned about losing.
“They’ll go through the whole thing for a half-hour, then they’ll go to their boss that is in charge of the department. They’ll explain everything to them, what they find in those records,” Buzzeo said. “You don’t have to go see another doctor on the outside. You don’t have to get two or three different opinions on what is going on. So, I wouldn’t give that up.”
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