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 employs 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 106.5 billion for compensation benefits. The long-term "actuarial accrued liability" (total estimated future payments for veterans and their family members) is 59.6 billion for education benefits; and $4.6 billion for burial benefits. 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.
