Regular readers will remember that telephone town hall I referred to last week — the one in which a plurality of veterans said that health care costs are their biggest problem. Today, HuffPo reports:According to a study released by the Harvard Medical School, 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died last year as a result of not having health insurance. Researchers emphasize that “that figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001.”
Mind you, any vet with an honorable discharge can get free treatment for an illness — at a VA clinic. Too often, veterans live far away from the nearest facility, and can’t get insured on the private market. For one thing, we all have those preexisting conditions from the rigors of service: anyone with ten years of airborne “jump status” has an automatic disability rating whether they need it or not, because they almost certainly will. There is a reason why almost every military retiree looks a decade older than his actual age.
The AP also has a story this morning on the rising number of wounded coming back from Afghanistan, so this is as good a time as any to talk about the price of freedom — because it isn’t free. Soldiers cost money, and when they get injured it costs even more.
Which is why the eleventh of November is always such a fun day for me: I’ll go out today wearing some leftover brass — my unit crest from the language school, a 1st Cavalry Division pin — and inevitably, strangers will thank me for my service, at which point I always thank them for paying their taxes.
“Think of me when you write the check,” I say.
Normally, this ends in careful laughter. Sometimes, it ends in bewildered awkwardness. But it is a conversation I have at least once a year, usually several times on this day, with people who have not made the mental connection between Republican orthodoxy and the perennial funding shortfalls of the Department of Veterans Affairs. They are the same people who think health care reform is the end of freedom.
