Science

The Peace Drug

Bilmes, who has studied the ongoing costs of the wars, estimates that treating Iraq vets with PTSD over the next 50 years will cost taxpayers $100 billion.

Vets with PTSD are particularly costly to the [Veterans Affairs] system,” says Linda Bilmes, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “They constitute 8 percent of the claims, but 20 percent of the payments.” Bilmes, who has studied the ongoing costs of the wars, estimates that treating Iraq vets with PTSD over the next 50 years will cost taxpayers $100 billion. This is based on findings that one-third of vets with PTSD will remain unemployable, and all suffering with PTSD will have a much higher than normal likelihood of needing treatment for physical ailments. And that’s just the direct costs to the budget. “Assuming that the war continues, though with lower deployments, through 2017,” she says, and assuming the rate of PTSD isn’t being underreported, the cost of lost economic productivity to the U.S. economy will be in excess of $65 billion.

Original Article (Washington Post): 
The Peace Drug
Artwork Fair Use By: Sonia Sevilla

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