Benefits

WASHINGTON – Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie overruled a top benefits official Thursday and said the VA won't ignore federal law and will now reimburse veterans who may have been underpaid GI Bill benefits.

The move came just hours after Paul Lawrence, the VA’s undersecretary for benefits, testified on Capitol Hill that the amount of work it would take to figure out how many were shortchanged and by how much wouldn't be worth it.

WASHINGTON — Researchers with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found for the first time that enough evidence exists to link hypertension to Agent Orange exposure during the Vietnam War.

The finding, announced Thursday, bolsters the case for veterans with hypertension to be granted easier access to Department of Veterans Affairs benefits, advocates argued. Before last week’s announcement, researchers had determined there was only “limited” or “suggestive” evidence hypertension could be caused by chemical herbicides used in Vietnam.

The Education Department says it has identified more than 40,000 veterans who qualify to have their student debt canceled through what is called a "total and permanent disability discharge."

More than 25,000 of them are in default, however, and just 8,500 have even applied for the forgiveness. The government did not say it has discharged any of the debts of these eligible veterans.

Results of a retrospective study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that although off-label prescribing for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was effective across several medications, concurrent psychotherapy was the only predictor of diagnostic improvement.