No health insurance leads to over 2K veteran fatalities each year
Douglas Karr, Petty Officer Second Class, United States Navy Veteran
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A new report out of Harvard Medical School last week estimates that approximately 2.266 United States veterans under the age of 65 died in 2008 because they did not have health insurance. Despite the fact that the majority of vets receive medical care through the VA, over a million and a half non-wounded vets aged 65 and under are considered “too poor” to qualify for private insurance coverage but are not poor enough to be covered by Medicaid, according to a Harvard professor.
In general, uninsured individuals are 40% more likely to die than a person who does have health coverage – this according to the research at Harvard. A co-author of the Harvard study reports that at least six preventable deaths occur daily, and that well over 2,000 veterans lost their lives last year due to a “broken health insurance system.”
If you crunch the numbers, the total number of veterans who are estimated to have died as a result of being uninsured last year – 2,266 – is just about twice the number of United States soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the war began there in 2001.
The Harvard study claims that 1.46 million veterans between the ages of 18 (the age an individual must be to enroll in the military in our country) and 65 did not have any type of health insurance in 2008. Most vets are eligible for health coverage through the VA – however, veterans who were not injured during combat and who make a certain amount per year may be denied.
And, in some cases, certain vets are labeled as “low priority,” indicating that they are “too poor” to afford private health insurance on their own, but are just not destitute enough to qualify for Medicaid or what the VA calls “means-tested care.”
When you think about the variety of issues faced by veterans today, including PTSD, combat injuries and even the rare cancer mesothelioma, these statistics are cause for concern. One in five vets suffers from PTSD, and male veterans in general are twice as likely to commit suicide than civilian males here in the United States.
Equally as concerning is the fact that a quarter of all homeless individuals in our country are also vets.
The fact that veterans in America are struggling to receive adequate health care at all should be a red flag for all of us. How can we live with ourselves when we realize that we are failing the men and women who have sacrificed so much to protect us?
The pending health care legislation, unfortunately, will really have a limited effect on Americans in general until at least 2013, and even then it would probably not account for an estimated 20 million people, many who are likely to be veterans.
While vets do have options when it comes to receiving health care – they can contact the Veterans Benefit Network for assistance, for example – far too many of our servicemen and women are slipping through the cracks. What about the Army specialist who could not deploy last week because she did not have anyone to care for her infant son while she was overseas? The question of whether or not the military is doing enough for our veterans – including those who must arrange childcare while they are deployed – is on the minds of many right now. And not just veterans!
Although Veterans Day was last week, I believe that it is still important that we think about our veterans during the month of November (it is Military Families Month, after all). If you are a veteran, or you know someone who is – we probably ALL do – perhaps you will be interested in learning more about the many veteran healing resources available.