Disability benefits, especially for veterans, can be a difficult, often emotional issue to discuss as is witnessed in this The New York Times article and accompanying comments. Lt. Col. Daniel Gade, a professor of public policy at the United States Military Academy, lost a leg while serving as a tank company commander in Iraq in 2005. He spends much of his spare time publishing essays and traveling the country pushing the idea that the Department of Veterans Affairs should move away from paying veterans for their wounds and instead create incentives for them to find work or create businesses.

“It’s a difficult issue to broach. People immediately think you are trying to shortchange veterans,” he said in an interview. “But I’m in a position to do it because I have skin in the game, literally.”

Colonel Gade wants to avoid a partisan fight over his ideas which says are first about helping veterans and second about saving money: “I think we can show we have a no-kidding better way to help veterans that is cheaper and more effective.”

One comment author summed many points up not just on veterans’ benefits but the disability system in general: “We can say that ‘disability status’ can become a disability in itself, without suggesting any sort of malingering or intent to defraud. This applies to vets and civilians alike. There are many cases of disability where the person really can’t work; gaining disability status is a godsend for them. It enables them to actually be more successfully productive in the community than continually failing in the workplace. BUT…Some people don’t do well being disabled. The status itself seems to undermine their ability to take charge of their lives.” Read more…