As I've posted here recently (and written about for years over at Editor & Publisher), the true cost -- both human and financial -- of our current wars can best be viewed through the prism of physically and mentally wounded vets. Now an AP report today puts that in stark relief. It also updates some numbers on soldier suicides.
About 29,320 troops are officially listed as wounded in action in Iraq as of yesterday, but as the story points out there have been 31,325 others treated for non-combat injuries and illness as of March 1. "The Pentagon keeps two sets of books," said Linda Bilmes, co-author (with Joseph Stiglitz) of the startlingly important new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War. "It is important to understand the full number of casualties because the U.S. government is responsible for paying disability compensation and medical care for all our troops, regardless of how they were injured."
Now here's the real kicker: Veterans Affairs predicts it will treat 330,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009 — a 14 percent increase over the 2008 estimate of 263,000 — at a cost of nearly $1.3 billion.
But critics say that is not enough for a system that has a backlog of about 400,000 pending medical claims and complaints, especially in mental health care. The VA "will not request enough resources to care for the troops — and in fact this is precisely what has happened in the past three years," said Bilmes.
Bilmes said the VA is hoping to offset some of the costs through increased fees and co-payments — putting more of the burden for health care costs back on soldiers. "That is the thing that sticks in the gullet, the fact they're hoping to raise $2 or $3 billion through their fees, which is what we spend in Iraq and Afghanistan in about three days," she said. "For three days of fighting, we could not charge these vets a higher co-payment."
At E&P, I have been writing about the hidden story of wounded vets for almost five years. I have especially focused on noncombat deaths and injures -- through accidents, illness, suicides. There are many chapters on this in my new book, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed in Iraq.
But the AP today updates the strictly official suicide number from Iraq an Afghanistan: 144 troops through the end of 2005. This, of course, is badly outdated and undercounted, as it does not include the many open or ongoing investigations -- nor the hundreds or thousands of suicides among vets back at home. I've tried to cover many of these myself.
Dr. Gerald Cross, a VA official, said during this week's hearings that 120,000 vets from Iraq and Afghanistan using VA care have potential mental health problems -- and that nearly 68,000 have potential post-traumatic stress disorder, the AP reports.
The full AP report:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/...
I blog at:
http://gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.com/