The uncomfortable truth about veteran disability benefits
A few weeks ago, an article titled “American Veterans now receive absurdly generous benefits” made its rounds through social media. The article errantly employs statistical arguments and strawman fallacy when discussing excessive veteran benefits against curbing government waste, yet the thesis doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Worse yet, the piece charges that American federal government waste and inefficacy can be resolved by targeting the benefits earned by American veterans who do receive “generous benefits” …If they qualify against rigorous standards of examination. If they do not, the appeals process is arbitrarily prohibitive and affects scores of veterans who served honorably but have had their claims denied time and again.
Veteran disability payments and Veterans Administration budgets have increased despite a one-third total contraction of the veteran demographic. This requires context. Data shows that more American's served in the military on average before 2001, but for shorter durations, with significantly less exposure to combat or other hazardous conditions. The demographics of service peaked at 9% during World War II, then gradually decreased to a mean of roughly 0.5% percent average population serving from 2001-2021.
This means that more Americans served longer durations (due to higher propensity for reenlistment) over the last two decades, and thus had a greater likelihood of being in combat or being exposed to toxic burn pits and thus, are likelier to acquire a service-connected disability (or disabilities) which the VA would need to account for. Servicemembers wounded while deployed had much higher survivability from 2001-2021, due to increased battlefield medical practices. It would stand to reason that they would be eligible for higher beneficiary compensation… because they survived actual combat-related injuries and conditions.
The article states that a 100% designation “ensures a generous $4,000 monthly payment for life.” According to living wage calculator from the year 2020, a two-adult, two-child household living wage was $68,808 per year. Veteran 100% disability payments in 2024 equate to just over $48,000 a year. These “generous” benefits are not even a suitable living wage, evidenced by the fact that roughly a quarter of veterans (ages 21-64) receiving more than 70% disability compensation are still employed, while the average employment rates of veterans with no disability rating or less than 50% are still around three-quarters of the demographic.
Less than one-fifth of veterans have received a rating of greater than 70%, and even fewer granted a 100% disability rating. Many veterans must use their disability compensation to fund medical expenses out of pocket due to the inefficiency of VA healthcare to provide timely support, with post-9/11 veterans being the lowest percentage enrolled in VA healthcare.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities using 2023 federal spending data, subsidized health insurance for American’s constituted 24% of the federal budget ($1.6 trillion). Social Security accounted for 21% ($1.4 trillion). Defense came in third at 13% ($820 billion). Economic security programs (low-income assistance for Americans) accounted for eight percent, or $545 billion.
Veteran disability compensation, healthcare costs, and federal retiree benefits combined for seven percent of federal spending, or $481 billion.
The cost of compensating disabled veterans – most of whom remain in the workforce until advance age cycles them out – is the smallest sliver of operational costs related to the estimated $8 trillion spent by the United States during the post-9/11 wars (2001-2020).
Indeed, suicide rates have increased relative to comparable non-veterans. This dangerous suggestion that veterans receiving disability compensation are supposed to have a positive correlation between their mental wellbeing and disability compensation ignores entirely the failure by healthcare programs to provide effective mental health support or services to veterans dealing with PTSD, loss of tribe, reintegration to civilian society, substance abuse, prolonged/chronic pain, and other contributory factors in veteran suicide rates.
A study released by the VA this year found that for every 100 days of exposure to open burn pits, propensity increased by clear consistent and compounding factors among the 459,000+ veterans who participated in the study. These veterans were found to have chronic issues such as COPD, ischemic stroke, and asthma. Those medical, peer-reviewed findings do not suggest that "some" veterans have increased chronic health conditions related to their service. Rather, it is irrefutable that burn pit contamination impacted everyone exposed to these deployment hazards.
This research simply seeks to provide actual, statistical, irrefutable evidence that veteran disability benefits are based on clear, defined factors which still only represent a small portion of the annual federal budget.
If there is an argument to cut or curtail veteran benefits on account of hypothesized waste and abuse, this rebuttal would suggest consideration of how many U.S. servicemembers face the silent killer of our generation: outsized propensity for cancer diagnosis directly related to military service. Failure to care for our servicemembers after their honorable service is a surefire way to discourage the next generation from volunteering to serve this nation.
