October 13, 2011 - Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan showed freshman Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Atwater, Calif., a hint of what's to come in a war whose costs will keep accumulating for decades.Accompanied by four House colleagues, three of them doctors, Denham spent last weekend touring Bagram and other Afghanistan bases. Although brief, the trip put the lawmakers face-to-face with the war's extended health-care price tag.
"It's obviously going to be a huge expense," Denham said Thursday. "It's undefined, but the one thing that is defined is that we have to take care of the veteran."
The bills already are piling up.
More than 513,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had filed for disability benefits as of last year. Some of these war-disabled are obvious, such as the approximately 1,600 who have had one or more limbs amputated. Some wounds are hidden, such as those diagnosed with post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury.
Nearly one in five of the more than 2 million veterans who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan suffer from mental health conditions, according to a study released earlier this month by an advocacy group called Veterans for Common Sense. read more>>>
Speaking of Congress and Especially the committee's related to the Veteran the Senate's last hearing was this: Joint Hearing on the legislative presentation of The American Legion September 21 2011, notice the date, this was the first and only hearing after coming back from their August vacation, and none are listed as coming up since that Joint Hearing, not one more hearing on veterans issues!
As to the House, they have had hearings, most have not covered the wide issues related to All veterans, they've tried to cut the Veterans Agency Budget and if you watch or listen, back to the same from the 108th and 109th, never Demanding the Country Sacrifice as they waged two wars, the questioning from some of the representatives sounds like a 'gotcha relay', they ask a question interrupt the witness as they start to answer asking another question and this continues, never getting an answer while they seek that 'gotcha political' spin point!!
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