My guess is Obama knows he is toast and I think that he has

Discussion in 'Politics' started by jficquette, Jun 14, 2012.

  1. Max E.

    Max E.

    Yeah this is one thing I agree with you on, roughly a million people have fought in Iraq and afghanistan in order for it to cost 5 trillion in future medical bills, thats an average of 5 million dollars a person...There is not a chance in hell that number is accurate, even cut in half it would be 2.5 million per person......


     
    #11     Jun 14, 2012
  2. Medical bills,interest on debt,disability payments for troops in their 20's for life,maintaining military bases in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain etc
     
    #12     Jun 14, 2012
  3. http://wvgazette.com/News/201205270144



    May 27, 2012

    45% of new military veterans seek disability
    By The Associated Press




    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 1991 Persian Gulf War, 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 past year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans receive compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea, just two.

    It's unclear how much worse off these new veterans are than their predecessors. Many factors are driving the dramatic increase in claims - the weak economy, more troops surviving wounds, and more awareness of problems such as concussions and PTSD. Almost one-third have been granted disability so far.

    Government officials and some veterans' advocates say veterans who might have been able to work with certain disabilities might be more inclined to seek benefits now because they lost jobs or can't find any. Aggressive outreach and advocacy efforts also have brought more veterans into the system, which must evaluate each claim to see if it is war-related. Payments range from $127 a month for a 10 percent disability to $2,769 for a full one.

    As the nation commemorates the more than 6,400 troops who died in post-9/11 wars, the problems of those who survived also draw attention. These new veterans are seeking a level of help the government did not anticipate, and for which there is no special fund set aside to pay.

    The Department of Veterans Affairs is mired in backlogged claims, but "our mission is to take care of whatever the population is," said Allison Hickey, the VA's undersecretary for benefits. "We want them to have what their entitlement is."

    The 21 percent who filed claims in previous wars is Hickey's estimate of an average for Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield. The VA has details only on the current disability claims being paid to veterans of each war.

    The AP spent three months reviewing records and talking with doctors, government officials and former troops to take stock of the new veterans. They are different in many ways from those who fought before them.

    More are from the Reserve and National Guard -- 28 percent of those filing disability claims -- rather than career military. The Reserve and National Guard made up a greater percentage of troops in these wars than they did in previous ones. About 31 percent of Guard/Reserve new veterans have filed claims, compared to 56 percent of career military ones.

    More of the new veterans are women, accounting for 12 percent of those who have sought care through the VA. Women also served in greater numbers in these wars than in the past. Some female veterans are claiming PTSD due to military sexual trauma -- a new challenge from a disability-rating standpoint, Hickey said.

    The new veterans have different types of injuries than previous veterans did. That's partly because improvised bombs have been the main weapon and because body armor and improved battlefield care allowed many of them to survive wounds that, in past wars, proved fatal.

    "They're being kept alive at unprecedented rates," said Dr. David Cifu, the VA's medical rehabilitation chief. More than 95 percent of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived.

    Just over half of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans eligible for VA care have used it so far.

    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 might 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 nonmilitary patients and expects to start doing them soon on veterans.
















    http://articles.marketwatch.com/201...nd-afghanistan-veterans-budgetary-assessments



    Iraq war ends with a $4 trillion IOU


    Veterans’ health care costs to rise sharply over the next 40 years

    December 15, 2011|Christopher Hinton, MarketWatch




    WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The nine-year-old Iraq war came to an official end on Thursday, but paying for it will continue for decades until U.S. taxpayers have shelled out an estimated $4 trillion.

    Over a 50-year period, that comes to $80 billion annually.

    Although that only represents about 1% of nation’s gross domestic product, it’s more than half of the national budget deficit. It’s also roughly equal to what the U.S. spends on the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency combined each year.

    Near the start of the war, the U.S. Defense Department estimated it would cost $50 billion to $80 billion. White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was dismissed in 2002 after suggesting the price of invading and occupying Iraq could reach $200 billion.

    “The direct costs for the war were about $800 billion, but the indirect costs, the costs you can’t easily see, that payoff will outlast you and me,” said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at American Progress, a Washington, D.C. think tank, and a former assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan.

    Those costs include interest payments on the billions borrowed to fund the war; the cost of maintaining military bases in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain to defend Iraq or reoccupy the country if the Baghdad government unravels; and the expense of using private security contractors to protect U.S. property in the country and to train Iraqi forces.

    Caring for veterans, more than 2 million of them, could alone reach $1 trillion, according to Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, in Congressional testimony in July.

    Other experts said that was too conservative and anticipate twice that amount. The advance in medical technology has helped more soldiers survive battlefield injuries, but followup care can often last a lifetime and be costly.

    More than 32,000 soldiers were wounded in Iraq, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. Add in Afghanistan and that number jumps to 47,000.

    Altogether, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost the U.S. between $4 trillion and $6 trillion, more than half of which would be due to the fighting in Iraq, said Neta Crawford, a political science professor at Brown University.

    Her numbers, which are backed by similar studies at Columbia and Harvard universities, estimate the U.S. has already spent $2 trillion on the wars after including debt interest and the higher cost of veterans’ disabilities.

    The annual budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs has more than doubled since 2003 to a requested $132.2 billion for fiscal 2012. That amount is expected to rise sharply over the next four decades as lingering health problems for veterans become more serious as they grow older.

    Costs for Vietnam veterans did not peak until 30 or 40 years after the end of the war, according to Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

    “We will have a vast overhang in domestic costs for caring for the wounded and covering retirement expenditure of the war fighters,” said Loren Thompson, a policy expert with the Lexington Institute. “The U.S. will continue to incur major costs for decades to come.”
     
    #13     Jun 14, 2012
  4. Max E.

    Max E.

    What does maintaining military bases in kuwait bahrain and qatar have to do with "future medical costs"
     
    #14     Jun 14, 2012
  5. :cool: :cool: :cool:

    132 billion + for the next 40-70 years
     
    #15     Jun 14, 2012
  6. That propaganda which all the libs eat up like candy. First of all, those 1.6 mill vets were vets anyway and were always going to get money from the government. Secondly, if they are that sick how the hell are they going to live 50 years?
     
    #16     Jun 14, 2012
  7. Max E.

    Max E.

    You may want to take those sunglasses off Coolio they seem to be blurring your vision.....

    Do You realize that there is currently an exponentially higher number of American veterans living from previous wars other than Iraq and Afghanistan?
     
    #17     Jun 14, 2012
  8. Many of those old vets wont be living another 40-70 years


    You don't have to be terminally ill to get disability
     
    #18     Jun 14, 2012
  9. Neo cons needs more wars to replace the old vets and keep that 132 billion a year expense going
     
    #19     Jun 14, 2012
  10. Do you realize that cost could have been going down rather then up if we didn't have all the new vets from the recent wars to replace the older ones
     
    #20     Jun 14, 2012