United States Department of Veterans Affairs

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a Cabinet-level executive branch department of the federal government charged with providing lifelong healthcare services to eligible military veterans at the 170 VA medical centers and outpatient clinics located throughout the country. Non-healthcare benefits include disability compensation, vocational rehabilitation, education assistance, home loans, and life insurance. The VA also provides burial and memorial benefits to eligible veterans and family members at 135 national cemeteries. While veterans' benefits have been provided by the federal government since the American Revolutionary War, a veteran-specific federal agency was not established until 1930, as the Veterans' Administration. In 1982, its mission was expanded to include caring for civilians and people who were not veterans in case of a national emergency. In 1989, the Veterans' Administration became a cabinet-level Department of Veterans Affairs. The president appoints the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, who is also a cabinet member, to lead the agency. the VA employed 412,892 people at hundreds of Veterans Affairs medical facilities, clinics, benefits offices, and cemeteries. In Fiscal Year 2016 net program costs for the department were $273 billion, which includes the VBA Actuarial Cost of $106.5 billion for compensation benefits. The long-term "actuarial accrued liability" (total estimated future payments for veterans and their family members) is $2.491 trillion for compensation benefits; $59.6 billion for education benefits; and $4.6 billion for burial benefits. History The history and evolution of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are inextricably intertwined and dependent on the history of America's wars, as wounded soldiers are the population the VA cares for. The list of wars involving the United States from the American Revolutionary War to the present totals ninety-nine wars. The majority of the United States military casualties of war, however, occurred in the following eight wars: American Revolutionary War (est. 8000), American Civil War (218,222), World War I (53,402), World War II (291,567), Korean War (33,686), Vietnam War (47,424), Iraq War (3,836), and the War in Afghanistan (1,833). It is these wars that have primarily driven the mission and evolution of the VA. The VA maintains a detailed list of war wounded, as it is this population that comprises the VA care system.