America's newest veterans are filing for disability benefits at a historic rate, claiming to be the most medically and mentally troubled generation of former troops the nation has ever seen.
A staggering 45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21 percent who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told The Associated Press.
What's more, these new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea, just two.
Full article is long. Here is the link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1549436.html
rofl I can't wait for the Wild Cobras of this site who whine about people whoring government programs like disabilities benefits to come up in this thread and defendthe veterans
lol signing up for a War overseas knowing it would be a show and saying you can't work because of it
The wars stretched on for a looooong time, with many serving 5+ tours.
Advanced medicine saved a LOT more than otherwise would have died, plus the identification and detection of things like TBI's and PTSD have led to a lot more eligible.
If you don't like the cost, suck it, 'cause they ain't going away, and we all owe them quite a bit while we sat on our lazy asses and left them there to rot, and I am just as guilty as anybody.
Repugs' phony, botched wars will cost USA $Ts for decades
Yup.Of those who have sought VA care:
_More than 1,600 of them lost a limb; many others lost fingers or toes.
_At least 156 are blind, and thousands of others have impaired vision.
_More than 177,000 have hearing loss, and more than 350,000 report tinnitus – noise or ringing in the ears.
_Thousands are disfigured, as many as 200 of them so badly that they may need face transplants. One-quarter of battlefield injuries requiring evacuation included wounds to the face or jaw, one study found.
"The numbers are pretty staggering," said Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who has done four face transplants on non-military patients and expects to start doing them soon on veterans.
Others have invisible wounds. More than 400,000 of these new veterans have been treated by the VA for a mental health problem, most commonly, PTSD.
Tens of thousands of veterans suffered traumatic brain injury, or TBI – mostly mild concussions from bomb blasts – and doctors don't know what's in store for them long-term. Cifu, of the VA, said that roughly 20 percent of active duty troops suffered concussions, but only one-third of them have symptoms lasting beyond a few months.
That's still a big number, and "it's very rare that someone has just a single concussion," said David Hovda, director of the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center. Suffering multiple concussions, or one soon after another, raises the risk of long-term problems. A brain injury also makes the brain more susceptible to PTSD, he said.
The more you know about this, the worse you realize it is, and the worse you realize it is going to get.
I would point out that PTSD and TBI's really really do a number on your employability.
These men AND women will be homeless and out on the streets in numbers we will find shocking and shaming to see.
As they remain homeless, they WILL be in ERs and you will be paying for them.
I can't wait until we are asking TeaParty s for tax increases to pay for it, so I can watch them squirm and wiggle trying to morally justify saying no to keep to their "no new taxes" dogma, while trying to claim that they care about veterans. /boutonsesque rant
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Militar...ny-is-too-many
Twenty percent of active-duty Army troops are on at least their third tour of duty to a war zone.
That is just the Army.Some 107,000 Army soldiers have been deployed to war three or more times since 2001, or some 20 percent of the active-duty force. More than 50,000 of those currently in uniform have completed four or more combat tours, Army figures indicate.
America’s current conflicts “represent not only the longest wars fought by our Army, but also the longest fought by an all-volunteer force,” placing “tremendous and unique burdens on our soldiers and families as compared to the previous conflicts,” notes a wide-ranging study of soldiers’ mental health released by the Army earlier this year.
The Pentagon has grappled with just how many deployments is too many. A 2010 study known as the “Red Book” discovered in those who had completed multiple tours “a growing high-risk population of soldiers engaging in criminal and high-risk behavior with increasingly more severe outcomes including violent crime.”Many troops wrestle with the strains of repeated trips to war zones. Tech Sgt. Bob Roberts has completed 15 deployments in 17 years since joining the Air Force’s elite pararescuers, who were most recently serving as a quick-reaction force for the final troops pulling out of Iraq. During the past four years, Roberts estimates he has been away from home more than 300 days a year. A former professional snowboarder, Roberts says the key to doing the job he loves is learning how “to keep your personal freakout at bay” amid violent chaos that sometimes requires “picking up pieces of people.”
He is quick to acknowledge that war has taken its toll. Roberts is on his fourth marriage. “I’ve chosen this over relationships – over everything else,” he says. The majority of pararescuers he began serving with, he adds, have turned violence inward and are now either “in jail, have a bullet in their head, or are drug abusers.”
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