Experts tally Iraq war's health cost

[Barrett808]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Experts tally Iraq war's health cost
Kavita Mishra, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, May 10, 2007

Few saw it coming, but six years into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, health care providers are overwhelmed by the demand of returning veterans suffering from mental health stress or traumatic brain injury.

Few understood the financial impact war would have on the Veterans Affairs medical system, projected by a Harvard economist's study earlier this year to be as much as $600 billion.

But Linda Bilmes, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government and author of the study, said Wednesday that disability claims were slamming the system, with more than 25 percent of returning veterans filing. Roughly 180,000 claims needed to be addressed -- on top of 400,000 pre-existing claims from veterans of past wars, many of whom are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder.

At a teach-in at UCSF on Wednesday about the health effects of the Iraq war, Bilmes calculated that the loss of income and economic contribution from those veterans and the dead, in addition to the current and future expenses of the war, could cost the United States as much as $1 trillion to $2 trillion.

Read more: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/10/BAGIFPOG7Q1.DTL&type=politics

[Monkeyman]

1. 52,000 denied health care 600,000 veterans last year out right denied

[RedEarth]

2. kr

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. No one could have predicted...

Ratfuckers.