Veterans Without Health Care

Although many Americans believe that the nation’s veterans have ready access to health care, that is far from the case. A new study by researchers at the Harvard Medical School has found that millions of veterans and their dependents have no access to care in veterans’ hospitals and clinics and no health insurance to pay for care elsewhere. Their plight represents yet another failure of our disjointed health care system to provide coverage for all Americans.

Depressed male veterans have highest suicide risk

Among depressed U.S. military veterans, young white men have the highest risk of suicide, the results of a large VA study suggest. Using government data for more than 800,000 veterans who were treated for depression between 1999 and 2004, the investigators found that the overall suicide risk was 7 to 8 times higher compared with that in the general population.
Male veterans had roughly three times the rate of suicide as female veterans did, while younger veterans -- those ages 18 to 44 -- had a higher suicide rate than their older counterparts. Men who were 65 years or older had the second highest risk, while the lowest risk was seen among men between the ages of 45 and 64 years old.

1.8 Million Veterans Lack Health Coverage

Of the 47 million uninsured Americans, one in every eight (12.2 percent) is a veteran or member of a veteran’s household, according to a study by Harvard Medical School researchers published in the December, 2007 issue of the American Journal of Public Health (galley version available here). 1.8 million Veterans (12.7 percent of non-elderly veterans) were uninsured in 2004, up 290,000 since 2000, the study found. An addition 3.8 million members of their households were also uninsured and ineligible for VA care.

Study Finds 1.8 Million Veterans Are Uninsured

As the nation struggles to improve medical and mental health care for military personnel returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, about 1.8 million U.S. veterans under age 65 lack even basic health insurance or access to care at Veterans Affairs hospitals, a new study has found.

. . . . Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.), the committee's chairman, said taking care of veterans is a continuing cost of war. "All veterans should have access to 'their' health-care system," he said. "This is rationing health care to veterans, those who have served our nation. And I think it's unacceptable for a nation of our wealth and our ability."

The VA, Iraq and PTSD

The Department of Veterans Affairs is facing a wave of returning veterans who are struggling with memories of a war where it's hard to distinguish innocent civilians from enemy fighters -- and where the threat of suicide attacks and roadside bombs haunts the most routine mission.
Since 2001, about 1.4 million Americans have served in Iraq, Afghanistan or other locations in the global war on terror. The VA counts post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, as the most prevalent mental-health disorder -- and one of the top illnesses overall -- to emerge from the wars.