Top US economists predicted that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will land US taxpayers with a whopping $900 billion healthcare bill.
A study by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Blimes estimated the cost of providing veterans with lifetime medical care and disability payments at up to $934bn depending on the length and intensity of the ongoing conflicts.
That is almost a third higher than both estimated in their 2008 book The Three Trillion Dollar War.
It claimed that direct US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan - which did not not factor in the long-term costs of care for wounded veterans - already exceeded the cost of the Vietnam and Korean wars.
Around 600,000 of the more than 2.1 million combatants deployed since 2001 received treatment by the Department of Veterans Affairs, they revealed.
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