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COST OF IRAQ WAR WILL HIT VA HOSPITALS -- As

wounds and injuries mount, so does the financial

burden imposed on the VA.

 

 

Story here... http://www.dailybreeze.com/
news/nationworld/articles/5743006.html

Story below:

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Cost of Iraq war will hit VA's hospitals

As wounds and injuries mount, so does the financial burden imposed on the veterans agency.

By Dogen Hannah
Contra Costa Times

As Sgt. Mariela Mason lay in a coma with grave brain damage, military doctors suggested that her parents might want to end her life.

"They said, 'She's going to be a veggie for the rest of her life; she has no chance,' " recalled Mason's mother, Lisette Meylan. "I was not a happy camper that day."

More than two years later, the former Army truck driver is awake and recovering from her Iraq war injuries.

Around-the-clock care at military and Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals and treatment by private therapists have given her a chance. But she remains severely disabled and probably will need extensive VA care for years, if not the rest of her life.

Her story illustrates the long-term cost -- in dollars as well as broken bodies -- of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Caring for and compensating troops who return with wounds, injuries or illnesses is the price the nation has just begun to pay.

It could cost the VA at least $350 billion to provide disability compensation and health care to Afghanistan and Iraq veterans, according to a Harvard University researcher's conservative estimate. Those costs could climb as high as $663 billion, if many troops remain at war much longer and health care costs inflate.

"We're running up a bill that we'll be paying for the next 50 years," said Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs for Veterans for America, a national advocacy organization.

VA already has shortfalls

The nation has committed $427 billion to war costs, not including VA expenses. Pending budget requests would raise the total to $662 billion.

It's not just the long-term taxpayer cost of VA benefits that worries veterans advocates.

The VA in the past few years has had health care funding shortfalls. Veterans groups worry that escalating costs could lead the agency to ration resources by delaying or limiting access to health care and by taking longer to process disability claims.

The VA's ability to provide high-quality, timely mental health care already is showing signs of strain.

"We're trying to raise the red flag," said Robinson.

More than 1.4 million U.S. military members have served in Iraq and Afghanistan in more than five years of combat.

Of those troops, at least 24,527 have been wounded in action, according to the Department of Defense. An additional estimated 28,000 have been injured or become so ill that they had to be evacuated from the war theater.

Almost every veteran, injured in action or not, can receive health care from the VA after leaving the military. In addition, veterans with disabilities related to military service may receive monthly compensation from the VA.

As fighting continues and 21,500 more troops are deployed to Iraq, veterans advocates are increasingly concerned about the nation's commitment to keeping up with the growing demand for benefits and their mounting cost.

"The VA provides a very high level of care, but its ability to do that is being undermined as we speak," said Dennis Cullinan, national legislative director for Veterans of Foreign Wars, a national lobbying and service organization.

"When there are shortfalls ... at a certain point something's got to give," said Cullinan.

High-quality VA health care is critical for veterans struggling to recover from crippling injuries. Many of them will depend on it for the rest of their lives.

Lisette and Emile Meylan credit VA care, in part, for their daughter's remarkable progress. Even VA doctors have been impressed at how much Mason improved after surgery, months of daily rehabilitation and treatment by private therapists.

"This experience has been very tough, very hard," said Mason, 27, who is married and has a 3-year-old girl. "But I proved to myself that even though this happened to me, I'm still strong. I made it."

Mason said she is fortunate to have survived a war in which more than 3,000 of her comrades have perished. She is determined to recover but remains hospitalized, faces years of rehabilitation and might never fully mend.

Projections in the billions

Time will tell how many Iraq and Afghanistan veterans receive VA health care and disability compensation. It also remains to be seen how much the benefits will cost during the veterans' lifetimes, though even conservative projections total billions of dollars.

Government and independent estimates vary, depending on variables such as how many troops will be at war and how long they will be there. Also unclear is the long-term cost of treating the wars' novel wounds, such as head injuries caused by homemade bombs.

"There's not a lot of information out there about how much it's going to cost to treat these types of injuries," said Scott Wallsten, an economist who studied the wars' costs while at the American Enterprise Institute.

Wallsten and research associate Katrina Kosec estimated the lifetime cost of treating a severe head injury at $600,000 to $4.3 million. They based their calculations partly on data from vehicle accident injuries in the United States.

About half of the troops wounded in action in Iraq and Afghanistan were injured by homemade bombs, according to Department of Defense statistics. Another 22 percent were wounded by artillery rounds, mortars, rockets, bullets and other weapons.

In Iraq, about 1,700 troops suffered brain or spinal cord injuries, with about 65 percent of those injuries characterized as mild, according to the Pentagon. At least 554 troops who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq have received what the military characterized as major amputations.

The Pentagon did not provide comprehensive statistics on war injuries.

Available statistics indicate that not every wounded veteran was badly injured. A little more than half of the troops wounded in action in Iraq or Afghanistan returned to duty within three days, according to the Pentagon.

Estimates vary widely

As of last month, more than 631,000 Afghanistan and Iraq veterans were eligible for VA health care, according to Linda Bilmes of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. About a third of those, or about 205,000 veterans, had sought health care.

Caring for the growing corps of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans during the next 40 years could cost the VA at least $282 billion, Bilmes reported in research she presented last month to the Allied Social Sciences Association.

That cost could rise to $315 billion if troop levels grow moderately and troops remain overseas into the next decade, she reported. If they grow even more and health care inflation hits double digits, the cost could reach $536 billion.

Add to that bill the large and growing cost of providing disability compensation to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. At least 104,000 veterans of those wars receive monthly disability compensation checks, Bilmes reported.

The VA's disability expenses could reach at least $67 billion during the next 40 years as more veterans seek help, Bilmes reported. That bill could rise to as much $127 billion if the number of troops who have served in either war reaches 2 million and health care costs grow.

Not every estimate of the cost of providing VA disability compensation and health care to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is as high as Bilmes' estimate. The Congressional Budget Office put it much lower.

In July, it projected that VA health care costs during the next 12 years would total no more than $7 billion.

That calculation included assumptions that many veterans would enroll in employer-provided health care plans.

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Larry Scott  --