 I'm Kevin C. Miller with DAV out of our Washington headquarters and joining me here today is my colleague, Assistant National Legislative Director John Retzer. Last August, thanks to the groundbreaking advocacy efforts of DAV, the Honoring Our Pact Act was signed into law. Among its many impactful provisions, the Pact Act reduced bureaucratic obstacles for an estimated 3.5 million veterans who seek VA benefits due to burn pit exposures during the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hostile locations. The law added presumptive conditions related to burn pit exposure, meaning veterans who served in overseas locations with active burn pits no longer have to prove their exposure or establish direct service connection if diagnosed with elements listed in the law that are known to cause such conditions. Thank you for joining me today, John. Good morning, Kevin, and thank you for having me. John, since we just mentioned presumptive conditions, could you let everyone know what it means when the VA considers a health condition to be presumptive? Yes, the way VA in general defines presumptive is related to a chronic, a tropical or a prisoner of war related disease or a disease that's associated with exposure to certain herbicide agents or a disease associated with exposure to contaminants would be considered to have an incurred or aggravated by your military service, even though there may be no evidence to such disease during your period of service, the VA has the ability to recognize that. Great, thank you for elaborating on what presumptive means. The Pact Act also created a special enrollment period for veterans who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other combat zones, an opportunity to enroll directly in VA health care without first applying for VA benefits. Can you let us know who is eligible for the special enrollment period and how they can apply and when they need to apply by? Yes, it's really important that our veterans who are deployed to combat zones that they take this opportunity to right now to look at enrolling into the VA health care, so one, like I said, you have to be in a combat zone, deployed to a combat zone, never enrolled in VA health care. And then the periods that they're looking at is that you left active duty after September 11th of 2001 and before October 1st of 2013. And then you are eligible to enroll directly into VA health care without first applying for disability compensation, which a lot of veterans were used to the idea that we have to file for compensation benefits to get to health care. So this is the one time that you can apply for the VA health care first. The deadline is coming up in that September 30th of 2023 just right around the corner. What I'd like to do is also articulate why it's so important for our veterans to go ahead and do this if you meet the eligibility requirements here is because however, veterans are needing this care, the care that is provided is from the VA is a high quality care, a very veteran-centered care that they've earned and they should apply right away. They shouldn't wait till later to do this, so they should apply today. But one of the things that we want veterans to know is that when they enroll into the VA health care, VA health care has proven to be better health care than the private sector on average. So we want to ensure that the veterans take advantage of this high quality veteran-centered care that we most deserve and earn. And VA hospitals had dramatically outperformed a lot of the non-VA hospitals and overall quality ratings and also patient satisfaction ratings because the fact that VA is centric to veterans needs and have an understanding of the military culture in which we come from. So I do want to encourage our veterans out there to have the confidence that they're going to walk into a health care system that is ready to take and take care of them. Great, thanks for explaining that, John. And like John said, folks, make sure you apply for your health care as soon as you can. And that leads us to our next question is, John, can you let folks know how they can contact their nearest DAV service office to help apply for VA health care disability compensation? Yes, our DAV benefits advocates, and we also call them as national service officers are located throughout the country. And what you can do is go to benefitsquestions.org. That's benefits with an S, questions with an S.org. And when you go to that site, you plug in your zip code and you will be provided the contact information, the address, the telephone number, and even an ability to send an email. And we highly encourage the email because when you do that, you are able to send it directly to the office that you're targeting to provide you the service. At the same time, I do want to also encourage and to share with the veteran population that they can also go to va.gov backslash-packed, P-A-C-T, to be able to reach out to VA for assistance and or call the 1-800-M-I-VA-411 to learn more about how to sign up for VA health care before the deadline of September 30th. However, I highly encourage that you take advantage of our DAV benefits advocates. Our national service officers are trained and provide free service to navigate the forms that's going to be needed to apply for the health care and to direct you on how to advocate for yourself when you have to work with the patient advocates at the VA Medical Center to make this happen. Great, thanks, John. And then can veterans who did not meet the criteria for special enrollment apply for VA health care? Yes, definitely. One of the things I want to share is that we had defined what presumptive is. One of the things that we need to know is when we go after a claim with the VA on the presumptive level, even though we may not be found to be eligible, one thing that is going to happen with the VA is no matter what occurs, as far as the outcome of resumption, the VA has a responsibility to process a claim and develop a claim to address direct service connection. So it's very important to all veterans when you're doing this process to go ahead and do what you think you're eligible for and let VA develop it properly. So yes, veterans can go ahead and apply for health care. And one of the means that they do this is by your income based on your income that you can get into health care without ever applying for benefits. And the other way is a reminder is when you are granted benefits through the service connection of your compensation that would also provide eligibility for health care. Great. And then the last question for the day is, do you need to be a member of DAV to utilize the benefits advocates to help apply for VA health care or VA disability compensation? No, the DAV benefits advocates are national service officers are there for all veterans who are needing assistance, even their dependents to be able to file claims, appeals and any other benefits questions with regards to the Department of Veterans Affairs for free. Great. Thanks, John, for explaining this today. And like John said, we're just gonna reiterate, make sure you go to benefits with an S, questionswithanS.org to contact your nearest national service office and get in touch with a DAV benefits advocate. They can answer any questions you might have and applying for VA health care or disability compensation. And on that note, thank you everybody for your time today and hope you have a good day.