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Iraq Is Going Keep Right On Costing Us for Decades
by James Glaser October 1, 2007 It doesn't matter if we start bringing the troops home tomorrow or if we wait another five years because the bill to take care of the Soldiers and Marines who fought there is going up every day. Right now there are over 300,000 disability claims in the VA system from returning Iraq and Afghan war veterans. You can't file a claim with the Veterans Administration until your enlistment is over, so it stands to reason that there will be hundreds of thousands of more claims in the next few years as those still serving end their time in the service. Here in Tallahassee the VA had to move and expand their clinic's Mental Health Unit because of the influx of new veterans looking for help with their PTSD. The Tallahassee Vets Center had to add new staff for the same reason. It isn't just Tallahassee, these increases in demand for veteran mental health services are nation-wide. A psychologist here at the Tallahassee clinic told me on Friday that do to the high case load he has, he can only see a veteran with PTSD about once every five weeks, but that to really help them he should be seeing them at least a couple times a week. He also told me that "in house' treatment programs are filled, and he has no idea when he could get a new patient into one of those programs. With advances in combat medical care, death totals are down for Americans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that means that people are being kept alive in this war who would have died in past wars. Making it home with a traumatic brain injury can mean a life-time of very expensive health care, and many of the veterans returning from Iraq will have to be taken care of for the next 50 or 60 or more years. Most veterans with Post Traumatic Stress wait sometimes for years before seeking help. So, the tens of thousands who are asking for help now may very well be just the tip of the iceberg. Modern warfare means modern health care and health care is expensive. Going into Iraq, George Bush and his administration were claiming that the total cost of the war would be around $50 billion dollars. We now know that figure is a very poor joke. For sure we will be spending hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions for the health care for the veterans who are injured in George's War on Terrorism. What makes all of this such a waste is that this week we learned that Saddam Hussein made an offer to George Bush to walk away from Iraq for one billion dollars. In hindsight, what a bargain that would have been. |
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