Finally Home, Traumatically Injured Vets Face New Lives As VA Faces Costs

Jerral Hancock wakes up every night in Lancaster, Calif., around 1 a.m. dreaming he is trapped in a burning tank. He opens his eyes, but he can't move, he can't get out of bed and he can't get a drink of water.

Hancock, 27, joined the Army in 2004 and went to Iraq, where he drove a tank. On Memorial Day 2007 -- one month after the birth of his second child -- Hancock drove over an IED. Just 21, he lost his arm and the use of both legs, and now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. The Department of Veterans Affairs pays him $10,000 every month for his disability, his caretakers, health care, medications and equipment for his new life.

No government agency has calculated fully the lifetime cost of health care for the large number of post-9/11 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with life-lasting wounds. But it is certain to be high, with the veterans' higher survival rates, longer tours of duty and multiple injuries, plus the anticipated cost to the VA of reducing the wait times for medical appointments and reaching veterans in rural areas.

"Medical costs peak decades later," said Linda Bilmes, a professor in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and coauthor of "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict."