A recent paper investigated veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to find out how much they were claiming in VA disability benefits. The answer is: a lot.
The study primarily looks at male soldiers who joined up between 2001 and 2011 and were assigned to a brigade combat team. What the chart above shows is that general disability payments didn't go up. This includes SSI, SSDI, and workers compensation. However, VA disability payments skyrocketed.
Why? Excellent question, and one that the authors ended up unable to answer. They controlled for a vast number of variables (age, race, IQ, number of years deployed, etc. etc.) and it turned out that these predicted exactly nothing:
Outcomes were measured eight years after enlistment, so 2009 through 2019. None of the things they thought might predict disability payments did so after the first few years. By the 2011 cohort, they explained literally zero.
So again, why have VA disability payments skyrocketed? The authors first suggest it's because we've passed a bunch of laws that make it easier to claim benefits. They back this up with a long list of changes to the law. But still, why would later cohorts take advantage of these laws more than earlier cohorts? I'm not sure this explains much either.
In fact, it turns out the whole thing is even more mysterious than it seems:
The results show that deployments have become less dangerous over time and simultaneously generated larger increases in VADC receipt.... The causal effect of a 10-month deployment on VADC compensation more than doubled during this period.... SSI/SSDI, by contrast, shows a very different pattern. The effect of a 10 month deployment on total payments from these programs decreased from $490 to $145 over the same period, consistent with the declining combat risk.
Disability payments from general programs decreased, as you'd expect from soldiers who were less exposed to combat later in the wars. But VA benefits surged.
Why why why? The final attempt to explain this is something else entirely: declining standards for new recruits.
Changes in deployment and exposure to violence across cohorts effectively explain none of the changes.... Observable selection, however, is a far better predictor of changes in noncombat deaths.... As more soldiers with lower AFQT scores and more moral waivers enlisted in the mid-2000s, noncombat deaths increased.
Hmmm. Noncombat deaths rise for a few years partly as a result of lower recruiting standards (and other things), but by 2010 it's showing zero effect. Did recruiting standards really change that much in two years? And even if this is real, the effect is smallish and only for noncombat deaths. It doesn't seem to account for anything else.
In the end, the authors suggest that greater generosity in awarding disability benefits, along with changes in the quality of the soldiers, can explain some of the huge increase in VA disability benefits. But even by their own account, not very much of it. The whole thing remains a mystery.
POSTSCRIPT: If I had to guess, I'd say disability benefits have risen largely because later cohorts were far more aware of the benefits available to them, and far less squeamish about claiming them. But the study didn't look at that, so it's only a guess.
It's possible that the younger generation is more likely to consider psychological trauma a real disability and is more willing to claim benefits for it, compared to older generations.
This. My dad's uncles were both injured in war, one at Normandy, one in Italy. They drank their lives away pretty quickly after returning to Illinois. PTSD wasn't named and was considered shameful anyway.
Well meaning groups like DAV and VFW, as well as private attorneys and law firms are aggressive in getting the max benefit possible
great post, Kevin.
one thing in that study that shocked me was that apparently vadc benefits are now 94% of the SSDI program despite only applying to a fraction of the population. that's insane.
head over to any reddit va benefits page and you'll find thread after thread of instructions on how to essentially game the system (claiming acne and sleep apnea, etc). any people questioning the propriety of that are immediately downvoted. this ethical breakdown (propped up by easy money and lax oversight) has to explain a lot of this.
Let's not forget that the majority of the milltary are Trump supporters so they're just following the example of The Grifter-in-Chief.
Why shouldn't we treat their acne or sleep apnea?
It sounds like Steve is saying vets are claiming their acne and sleep apnea are caused by their service in the military. That sounds pretty ridiculous to me.
Of course we should treat all medical issues/diseases/conditions.
this is not about treatment- every veteran deserves and gets that... Kevin's post is about VADC, which is a disability check. many of these vets seem to be claiming every small ailment so that they get as high a monthly check as possible.
There have been changes in policies, either by law or by changes in regulations. A number of conditions/diseases have been moved to being "presumptively" caused by conditions seen in battle/deployments as opposed to forcing people to prove that that exposure explicitly caused their problems.
That set up was being done to make up for the Agent Orange in action.
Well, the graph is zeroed in 2001 so, though I could make a pretty good guess about the 90's, it would be speculation.
But it looks to me like it parallels the penetration of the Internet. And that would support your explanation. You're a vet? Google "benefits for vets."
Question: Is there a urban vs. rural set of crosstabs? Something with distance to closest VA vs. primary care hospital? If you get your primary care at a VA, you're probably bombarded with information about the full extent of VA benefits as well as people whose job it is to help you apply. The decline of rural health care probably means that more veterans are seeking primary care at a VA and need all the money they can get (since, you know, they have to drive from rural to urban for health care).
Anecdotally, your graph starts about the time the first of our all-volunteer force would be completing a 30-year career, and a lot can go wrong health wise during that time. Second, let's not forget the churn of rotations in Afghanistan and Iraq. We suffered many causalities and residual effects (PTSD and TBI) on a daily basis especially during the 2000's. Finally, the VA (and Congress) gave greater credence to the environmental causes for cancer, from Agent Orange in Vietnam, to Camp Lejeune and now burn pits and other factors from Middle East.
Coming down from the Federal level, New Mexicans have just voted to amend the state constitution to provide
* property tax relief proportional to the degree of disability, up to 100% -- formerly, it applied only to 100% disabled former members of the military
AND
* A $10,000 exemption on property tax for all honorably discharged veterans owning property in New Mexico
Note that the disability exemption applies only to former members of the military, who, as Mr Drum has shown, have many benefits from the Federal government. It doesn't apply to locally-serving folks in hazardous public service professions, like fire fighter or police.
If the state would make up for the lost funds going to the local schools, then great.
One of the problems our country has is that property taxes fund local services. Poorer areas require higher rates to bring in comparable amounts of revenue, which helps drive out businesses. And/or they raise fees and fines while cutting services.
Property tax relief can be very useful, but if not paid for by, say, state income taxes, can also be meaningless. If everyone in an area gets a partial exemption, the rates go up to bring in the needed funds, and everyone ends up paying the same amount, exemption or not. If only a few are affected then rates only go up a little, and the targeted group gets a real break in taxes without over-burdening everyone else. The problem in the first case is that high rates can kill off investments in the community. And if those getting relief get above a small amount, say more than 10 or 20%, then that can breed resentment in the community.
You make excellent points! A financial analysis of the impact on the reduced property tax base that will result was sobering. When members of the legislature saw the analysis (two months before the election), they were floored. Apparently, they all just voted to place these two amendments on the ballot with little or no discussion, other than "We love our vets!"
The ballot language had no mention of the magnitude of the exemptions, just that it was "property tax relief", and people voted the same way the legislators did: "We LOVE our vets!"
And so here we are. I note in passing that this benefit is for the well-off veterans, those who own property (such as their own home). The destitute get nothing, and social services that might have helped them may end up being starved as a result, too.
I'd say those noting the increased awareness of the seriousness of health issues like PTSD and TBIs would be where to look. Also hearing loss. I think we put the deployed forces though a lot in the GWOT era, we owe them this much. Also would advances in medicine mean more disabled survivors versus say the Vietnam War - other actions between the eras were far smaller.
I'm not sure it's so mysterious, especially given the authors' speculative cause. Is it "later cohorts" taking more advantage, as Kevin says? Maybe, but the graph covers the period during which the policy changes took effect, so the correspondence isn't bad at all, regardless of "cohort." Throw in a couple of years' delay while the vets fully become aware of the changes and lawyers get familiar with how to apply it, plus another couple of years to process claims and payouts, and you might well have it.
Of course, I'm only guessing, but maybe the authors just did a thorough job already and Kevin is overthinking.
The Seattle Times late last October reprinted an NYT article about sudden deterioration in Navy Seals" occurring some time after leaving service.
A former Seal committed suicide and took care to leave a stack of books on TBI and his own symptoms, then:
The irony was that the laboratory had been set up to investigate TBI - but never managed to get their reports to anybody who should have gotten them until the NYT brought the lab's results to the Navy. It's possible that there was a problem with a lot of the special forces troops being exposed to constant TBI and nobody was looking - so they didn't get treatment they should have.
From a veteran's perspective. Benefits availability is 100% the reason. When I was discharged after the Vietnam war any issues I had that were not visible were ignored. In about 2000 the VA began actively pursuing veterans by making the application for and ease of access to many medical related treatments. Try cross tabbing on expense of medical care and bringing in more older veterans to the system.
The VA medical centers are far more crowded now then even 5 years ago.
There's currently a VA popup ad on websites that they paid extra for it to be extra-annoying.
That's something they didn't do twenty years ago. Baffled why they'd do it now.
It's the change in the culture. People more conscious of their health and more apt to look for treatment; more information available on what you can get and how to get it; more people willing to bend the truth, possibly more exposure to violence in war in the recent wars, higher expectations of institutions and lower standards for the people in them.
I remember the odor from the burning of the shit at Long Bien. That's now a cause for contacting the VA, I guess.
years ago it was the case that if one qualified for private insurance or insurance through work they wouldn't bother with the VA because the VA it's kind of hard to deal with. these days if I have an urgent condition I'll be offered a doctor's appointment in 6 months or so. so the VA is probably looking pretty good in comparison. this is not really an opinion of mine I just kind of wonder if it might be true
Look at the PACT Act...