This spreadsheet shows very conservative numbers, well in favor of over-projecting the probable real costs. But this is because certain contingiencies have been built in, such as enough money to cover potential DIC payments. Dependency and Indemnity Compensation is payment to the spouse (sometimes children) of veterans who die of service-related injuries. There is probably enough money to cover back-pay to those veterans who filed for Agent Orange benefits previously but were denied.
In the process of developing this spreadsheet, a long line of variables (down the left side column) were adjusted and tweaked to get the final numbers. What you see here are the most probable settings for each of these possibilities, which end up producing the final cost numbers for legislation HR-2254 / S-1939. If you spot something you think is out of line, drop us a note..... one thing we do is make the occasional mistake.
The Explanation Sheet (also titled Footnotes) walks down the variables and explains what each one is and why each is set to the value it is. For those who want to download the spreadsheet to alter the variables, we offer such a downloadable MSExcel Spreadsheet.
Here is our best estimate of what the Agent Orange Act of 2010 will cost over a 10 year period.
Here is our Explanation Sheet to justify the variable settings we have chosen.
Here is the Interactive Spreadsheet that you can download for yourself. You might want to note what variable settings you started with so you can repeat your conparative adjustment exercises ad infinitum.