Congressional Budget Office: The cost of PTSD, TBI

[The Bread Guy]

Via the NY Times:

It’s difficult to know just how many of the two million people who have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been afflicted with two common combat ailments, post-traumatic stress disorder (P.T.S.D.) and traumatic brain injury (T.B.I.). But a new study of six years of data from the Veterans Health Administration, published this month by the Congressional Budget Office, illuminates not just the extent of the treatment that is needed, but its costs.

In a sampling of nearly half a million veterans of the two wars, 21 percent had P.T.S.D., 2 percent had symptoms of T.B.I., and 5 percent had both. For a variety of reasons, it’s hard to extrapolate these rates to the entire group of those who served.

But the notable finding of the report is this: Taken together, the afflicted group’s first-year treatment costs ran four to six times as high as patients without these conditions ....

"The Veterans Health Administration's Treatment of PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury Among Recent Combat Veterans" - this from the CBO's blog:

.... Through September 2011, about 740,000 recent veterans had been treated at VHA—approximately half of all recent veterans eligible for care within that health system. VHA spent about $2 billion in fiscal year 2010 (in 2011 dollars) to provide medical care to all recent combat veterans.

CBO finds that:

    One in four recent combat veterans treated at VHA from 2004 to 2009 had a diagnosis of PTSD. About 7 percent had a diagnosis of TBI. (Those figures include veterans who had both diagnoses.) Nearly three-quarters of recent combat veterans treated at VHA had neither diagnosis.
    The average cost for OCO patients in the first year of their treatment was about four to six times greater for patients with a diagnosis of PTSD, TBI, or both than for patients without those conditions.
    VHA’s experience may not reflect the rates or the costs of treating PTSD or TBI in the overall population of recent combat veterans. A great deal of uncertainty surrounds the prevalence of PTSD and TBI within the OCO population and, hence, the number of veterans with those conditions that DoD, VHA, and other health care providers may encounter in the future ....

Full report (52 page 2.1 MB PDF) here