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Comment by ceallen | Hacker News Reader

Possible result of Iraq/Afghanistan wars? The army's reported 1 million injured, but I'm not sure how many of them transitioned to disability.

Would disabled veterans be reflected in these numbers?

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One entire million injured? Something must be off there, otherwise the injury rate would be ludicrously high relative to the small number of troops we had in the wars.

It's apparently this story:

http://www.ibtimes.com/va-stops-releasing-data-injured-vets-...

Which I think uses these numbers:

http://www.publichealth.va.gov/epidemiology/reports/oefoifon...

Which are the numbers of veterans that accessed VA facilities for health care, not the numbers of veterans that were injured (disabling injuries are one of the major eligibility factors for the VA, but there are other veterans that would also be eligible for VA services).

In particular, young veterans use the VA mostly in the case that they don't have private health insurance (a job with health insurance, mostly), so the healthier young veterans don't use the VA. Older vets often use the VA because they're retired and it has good services. My grandfather uses the VA without any service injuries because they've got comprehensive care for older guys -- all the services in one building; a great-uncle used them for hearing aids (slightly service-related) but not anything else; younger vets I know just use private care for now.

The statistics I link are specific to veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and Operation New Dawn (OND).

No, disability for injured veterans is separate from Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) that is available to the general population.

If they are discharged, yes.

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