Care for U.S. (Iraq and Afghanistan) veterans could cost $662 bln: study

BOSTON (Reuters) - Medical costs for U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could range from $350 billion to $662 billion over the next 40 years, as soldiers survive injuries that would have killed them in past conflicts, according to a Harvard University study.

Due to improvements in battlefield medicine and equipment, there are now about 16 "nonmortally wounded" soldiers for every death, far more than the 2.6 soldiers wounded per death in Vietnam, the study said, citing Department of Veterans' Affairs data.

The author of the study, Linda Bilmes, a lecturer at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, presented her findings at an academic conference in January. They were released publicly by the university this week.

The potential costs include medical care, disability payments and other benefits paid to injured veterans and assume that 44 percent of veterans eventually claim disability. That was the percentage of claims from the first Gulf War. Bilmes' calculations assume that by 2016, 2 million soldiers will have participated in these wars.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070202/us_nm/iraq_usa_veterans_dc

would be more than that :evilgrin:

We can keep them snowed & drooling for the rest of their lives for about $100 a year not counting the IV feeding.

week.

This HAS to be part of the discussion.

Keep sending them back to Iraq until they're dead.

Voila; no medical costs to take money away from Halliburton and KBR!

have a plan - already started - to cut veterans' costs by simply cutting veterans' benefits.

Even while the war is fresh in everybody's mind, they've closed veterans facilities and cut back benefits. Imagine after a few years.... if that crowd is in power, they'll just cut the vets loose and let 'em wander the streets. Oh..... wait.... that's what we do now (pretty much). I guess it'll just get worse.

No soul... this country has no soul!

wasted so many billions of dollars that ordinarily would be going to treat wounded troops.