By the end of the year, 10,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan will be home with their families--and their memories. As many as 20 percent of them will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety or depression, while suicide rates have reached tragic new highs among veterans. In response, the Department of Veterans Affairs has greatly expanded its mental health services.

I was initially assigned the working title, "Pursuing Equality in Health Care for the Elderly Is Futile." I prefer to think of that particular dead end of health policy as one of listening to the wrong music for too long. Hence, this article revises the title song of the movie, Urban Cowboy, to "Looking for better health [rather than either "love" or "love of equality"] in all the wrong places.

How many veterans fall through the gap between care and compensation is a question that is worth investigating. The scope is important, but there is little question that the problem exists.

Health inequalities are best resolved by pluralistic social processes that facilitate, but do not mandate, more effective choices and trade-offs.

Over the last hundred years, psychiatry has taken very different perspectives on war stress.