America’s veterans need all the help they can get but there’s no evidence it’s coming their way
And here’s something to add to that reality: even though many more soldiers survive, they do so with ever more injuries of various sorts — conditions that the Veterans Affairs (VA) and military doctors euphemistically call polytrauma. For some of this, you can thank ever-more-sophisticated improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and other gems of modern warfare like “smart” suicide bombs that can burn, blind, deafen, or mutilate soldier’s bodies, while traumatizing their brains in myriad ways, some of which will not be evident until months or years later.
In short, America’s veterans need all the help they can get and, as yet, there’s no evidence it’s coming their way.
All told today, more than 40% of post-9/11 veterans have some sort of officially recognized disability — compared with less than 25% of those from prior wars. That number is expected to rise to 54% over the course of the next 30 years. Those veterans are also using VA medical services at unprecedented rates, yet they often need to wait weeks to access much-needed care.
The VA Caregiver Program
The government is not entirely indifferent to the plight of family members who give up their livelihoods to care for our wounded. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law a bill that set in motion the VA Caregiver Program, a series of supports for families already dealing with the most injured or ill post-9/11 veterans.
Unfortunately, good things only last so long! In late 2021, the VA announced that it would conduct an audit of the nearly 20,000 families of post-9/11 veterans receiving stipends and services under the program, based on a new more stringent set of requirements. Those rules stipulated that veterans whose loved ones were enrolled be totally unable to perform at least one of the “tasks of daily living” like getting dressed, bathing, eating, or simply moving around.
While the VA initially projected that about a third of the “legacy” families previously covered by the program would lose their benefits in the new care environment, it soon became clear that many more — nearly 90% of those reviewed — might be found ineligible.
Isn’t it time that we begin pushing our congressional representatives (small hope, sadly enough!) to set in motion policies that would uplift us all, including those veterans, instead of pouring yet more staggering sums into a military that’s only sent so many of us to hell and back in this century?