Military service comes with many health care costs, both immediate and long term. These costs are incurred by active-duty and veteran patients, as well as the VA and DoD systems that have struggled to adequately meet their health care needs. The VA and DoD health care systems face a myriad of challenges in treating their diverse populations.
Identifying and responding to health care challenges requires reliable and detailed data. The 2017 Federal Health Care Data Trends was developed not only to report important data on the most significant health care challenges in federal medicine, but also to simplify and identify emergent trends.
The men and women who serve in the U.S. military are more likely to be diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder, diabetes mellitus, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Agent Orange, burn pits, and other toxic exposures also increase their risk of developing multiple types of cancer, multiple sclerosis, asthma, and many other conditions. Veterans are likely to be older than nonveterans (the median age of male veterans is 64 years, compared with 41 years for nonveterans), and therefore at risk for age-related conditions.
Of the nearly 22 million veterans in the U.S., 8.9 million are enrolled in the VA, and just short of 6 million access health care services annually. Active-duty service members make up just 15% of the military health system, while the family members of active-duty service members, National Guard members, reservists, and retirees constitute more than half of the TRICARE population.