Long-Term Price of Providing Veterans Medical Care Could Reach $660 Billion

A new study from Harvard University reports that the hidden financial costs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan will overwhelm the Department of Veterans Affairs for decades. The study, titled “Soldiers Returning from Iraq and Afghanistan: The long-term costs of providing veterans medical care and disability benefits,” finds that the Veterans Administration is both under-funded and under-equipped to deal with the current and future costs of veterans’ health care.

The study estimates that since the Global War on Terror began, 16 US soldiers have been wounded per fatality, a casualty rate that exceeds the rate of previous wars. Over 200,000 soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have been treated at VA medical facilities thus far, with 900,000 still deployed on active duty. The study predicts that the cost of medical care and compensation benefits for returning veterans will skyrocket once those troops return home. It also estimates that the cost over the soldiers lives will amount to up to seven hundred billion dollars.

The author of this study, Professor Linda Bilmes, joins me now from Boston. Professor Bilmes is former Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton Administration, and a Lecturer at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Welcome to Democracy Now!

* Linda Bilmes, lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Author of the study, “Soldiers Returning from Iraq and Afghanistan: The Long-term Costs of Providing Veterans Medical Care and Disability Benefits;" Linda Bilmes was Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton Administration. She is co-author, with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, of “The Economic Cost of the Iraq War: An Appraisal Three Years after the Beginning of the Conflict.”

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