Wounded OEF OIF Veteran? You are one in a million, at least

While this is a good article and certainly points out the price of war has even begun to be paid, it isn't even close.

The Department of Defense has one set of numbers but you can't go by them alone. The reason is many of the troops do not file claims for things like PTSD and TBI while enlisted. Some of them want to stay in as we saw when the report came out many of soldiers are using liposuction to meet standards. With TBI and PTSD often they deny what they are experiencing. The VA has a different set of numbers. Researchers have been trying to figure this out for a long time but whenever they put out data, they remind readers the numbers are as close as possible. They also point out that as years go by, more claims are filed for what war did to them.

Report: A Million Veterans Injured In Iraq, Afghanistan Wars
Forbes
Rebecca Ruiz
November 4, 2013

The International Business Times reported Friday that the Department of Veterans Affairs had stopped releasing the number of non-fatal casualties of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, thus concealing what the paper called a “grim milestone” of 1 million injuries.

All that can be said with any certainty is that as of last December more than 900,000 service men and women had been treated at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics since returning from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the monthly rate of new patients to these facilities as of the end of 2012 was around 10,000. Beyond that, the picture gets murky. In March, VA abruptly stopped releasing statistics on non-fatal war casualties to the public. However, experts say that there is no reason to suspect the monthly rate of new patients has changed…

VA stopped preparing and releasing these reports on health care use and disability claims involving the 2.6 million U.S. service members who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan without warning, claiming unspecified “security” reasons.

After the story was published, the International Business Times reported that VA announced it would release updated figures in November.
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