Noteboom The Law Firm

Treating Veterans Could Cost Over $900 Billion

October 6, 2010 - One major cost when establishing the amount of money required to go to war should be what it will take to fund health care for the soldiers and veterans. Physical injuries among combat and non-combat soldiers are always expected. What was not anticipated with the Iraq and Afghanistan was the overwhelming amount of soldiers returning with mental health trauma.

A recent study projected the cost of health care for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans could exceed $900 billion. The extreme amount of expense prompted the idea of establishing a veterans' trust fund as an option in making these payments. There is no reason health care treatment for veterans should not be included when determining the ultimate cost of going to war, according to U.S. Representative Bob Filner (D-CA). Rep. Filner likened establishing a veterans' trust fund to operating in the same manner as Medicare or Social Security.

The study looked at multiple variables. Specifically, researchers examined the number of veterans produced by these wars, varying rates of injuries, and the cost of treating these injuries. It then compared these variables against the recent and swiftly increasing health care costs of the recent years.

At the time of the study, over 2.1 million soldiers had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Department of Veterans Affairs has provided health care services of some kind to approximately 600,000 of those soldiers. That number is going to rise severely once every soldier returns.