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Post: Why 30% of military veterans get disability benefits, forcing Congress to scramble

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Why 30% of military veterans get disability benefits, forcing Congress to scramble
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@annamulrine

The United States has been paying benefits to battle-injured soldiers since the Revolutionary War, but those figures have risen astronomically since the turn of the 21st century.

Today, nearly 30% of military veterans get disability pay from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In the past year alone, the volume of new veterans’ compensation claims has “exceeded even our most aggressive projections,” Joshua Jacobs, Undersecretary for Benefits at the VA, told lawmakers this week. Why We Wrote This

Congress scrambled to pass an emergency spending bill to ensure veterans continue to receive benefits. Questions linger over why costs are rising so quickly and whether spending is best meeting the needs of veterans.

This surge in spending forced VA officials to go hat in hand to Congress this week, requesting $3 billion for a 2024 budget shortfall and a projected $12 billion next year.

They were granted the money on Thursday to meet this year’s needs in an emergency spending bill, now headed for President Biden’s desk to be signed into law.But lawmakers predicted this will not be the last time the department struggles with its ballooning budget, which currently stands at $370 billion. Recommended Transformation Ukraine’s nationalist Azov fighters, once sanctioned by US, strive to clear name The veteran population decreased, so why is spending on the rise? Between 2000 and 2022, the share of veterans in the U.S. decreased by one-third. Yet the VA’s budget nearly tripled during that time. This has been driven by an aging veteran population, rising health care prices, and what are widely agreed to be much-needed improvements to VA facilities, including hospitals.Democrats, for their part, have decried the growing privatization of some VA health services – known in VA parlance as “community care” – which is also driving up expenses. It’s a shift that began 10 years ago, after long wait times for veterans prompted a public outcry. Private care now accounts for about one-third of the VA’s $150 billion annual health care budget.Another big driver of the latest soaring VA costs has been a law passed in […]

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