You've obviously done more research than I have, but I would perhaps emphasize the state of adaptive technology (i.e., how sophisticated anyone could make fake limbs) over the government not doing enough. The welfare state was a different and much tinier thing back then with lower expectations placed upon it and private enterprise a much greater driving force in the first half of the 20th C.
Which is not to say that the gov't wasn't always buying the cheapest available option regardless of quality because, well, lowest bidder always wins.
(The history of adaptive tech is market-and-civilian-technology driven, not purely government driven. Governments make war and thus make wounded, but civilian demand for adaptive tech rose greatly in the post-war period, too -- more cars, more factories, more tractors, more power tools, better birth survival rates, etc. The VA was not the sole market, nor necessarily even the primary.
As an aside: the rate of permanently invalided soldiers rises as the advances in tactics and protective gear improve through the 20th C and beyond. It will always be behind the advances in weapons, but as casualty survivability increased, so did the need for adaptive tech. A limb blown off in WWII was much more likely to be fatal than it would be in Korea just a few years later because the Army changed the way MASH units were deployed -- pushing them much closer to the fighting and the wounded. The development of modern body armor further spiked the survival rate, which is why adaptive tech has leapfrogged since 2001 -- many of the wounded now would have been fatalities a short time ago, their torsos and heads as mangled as their limbs.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2015-02-28 06:21 pm (UTC)Which is not to say that the gov't wasn't always buying the cheapest available option regardless of quality because, well, lowest bidder always wins.
(The history of adaptive tech is market-and-civilian-technology driven, not purely government driven. Governments make war and thus make wounded, but civilian demand for adaptive tech rose greatly in the post-war period, too -- more cars, more factories, more tractors, more power tools, better birth survival rates, etc. The VA was not the sole market, nor necessarily even the primary.
As an aside: the rate of permanently invalided soldiers rises as the advances in tactics and protective gear improve through the 20th C and beyond. It will always be behind the advances in weapons, but as casualty survivability increased, so did the need for adaptive tech. A limb blown off in WWII was much more likely to be fatal than it would be in Korea just a few years later because the Army changed the way MASH units were deployed -- pushing them much closer to the fighting and the wounded. The development of modern body armor further spiked the survival rate, which is why adaptive tech has leapfrogged since 2001 -- many of the wounded now would have been fatalities a short time ago, their torsos and heads as mangled as their limbs.)