What is the cost of the Iraq War for the Families of wounded vets?

War doesn’t kill exactly, anymore.  It maims.

The Iraqi war has had a special devastation for American soldiers. For every soldier killed in the war, nearly sixteen arewounded. During the Vietnam war, there were 2.6 injuries perfatality—according to Linda Bilmes of The Kennedy School of Government atHarvard.   

There have been media reports about the backlog in medical care, butwhat is forgotten in the human costs--the price that families, mostly women payto welcome home these wounded warriors.  

This spring, the Department of Defense affirmed that there were 31,590wounded soldiers and an additional 38,631 removed from for non-battle medicaltransports. Bilmes of Harvard has very famously calculated in her book,The Three Trillion Dollar 

War that the cost of taking care of the veterans over their life timeswill cost between $349 to $662 billion--depending on additional troopdeployment.  

But what no one talks about is the female cost of taking care of thesemostly male veterans.  Unlike soldiers in other conflicts, these servicepeople are older, and 60% of them have family obligations according to Veteransfor America.

About 20% of the wounded have brain trauma, spinal injuries oramputations according to Paul Sullivan, an advocate who runs Veterans forCommon Sense.   That’s around 6,000 people. Another 20% have majorinjuries says Sullivan, like amputation, blindness, deafness or serious burns. 

The wives and mothers of the wounded will give up their jobs to takecare of them. They spend countless hours of their own unpaid time to take careof them and to manage their husband's health care appointments and needs.   

The soldiers families must often fight to get them medical care anddisability payments. Feminist economists have calculated the cost of a housewife'slabour—per year.  A study by MetLife and the AARP a few years ago estimated that caregivers lose about $700,000in income, and pension over the course of a lifetime of taking care of a familymember.  

But we still don't know exactly how much female labour will be usedinto taking care of these wounded warriors. 

It's a personal fortune.  And it’s a cost of war, the governmentcertainly isn’t talking about.