Wounded Troops Denied Benefits? DAV

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/...in589380.shtml

Wounded Troops Denied Benefits?

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18, 2003



Wounded GI Benefits


John Fernandez (Photo: CBS)



"We can't do our job which means in many cases ... that there's just an outright denial of benefits coming to these young men and women because they simply don't know about it."
David Gorman, Disabled American Veterans



(CBS) Many wounded U.S. soldiers are treated at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where President Bush today awarded Purple Hearts to 21 soldiers.

But CBS News Correspondent David Martin reports, wounded troops may return from war to find themselves in a different kind of battle ? with the U.S. military.

A disabled soldier will never see combat again, but he might find himself fighting a new fight against the government's medical bureaucracy.

Lieutenant John Fernandez, who lost part of both legs in Iraq, knows he can no longer be a soldier, but he's not ready to leave the army.

"I personally don't think it's right to be forced out of the ? the military and all of a sudden be forced to live on half of the pay that I was getting," he says.

Ryan Kelley, who lost his left leg below the knee, makes about $20,000 a year as a staff sergeant. Once he leaves the army, he will receive about $8,000 a year in benefits.

Fernandez is appealing his medical discharge. "I'm not gonna let myself be pushed around," he says.

He and his wife Kristen have become self-taught experts in the bureaucratic ins and outs.

"I can see how many soldiers can get confused," says Kristen Fernandez.

"I think that the military wants to get them off their hands," says David Gorman, who lost both legs in Vietnam.

Gorman is executive director of Disabled American Veterans, a group he says normally has easy access to wounded soldiers; but not this time.

"I don't know if it's a clouded secret about who's coming back, who's there, the nature of their disabilities, the nature of their wounds or not but there is not the kind of unfettered access that we used to have at Walter Reed," says Gorman.

A spokesman for Walter Reed Army Medical Center says the restricted access is the result of post 9/11 security concerns and new federal guidelines protecting patient privacy, which by coincidence took effect just as the war in Iraq was starting.

"We can't do our job which means in many cases, I believe personally, that there's just an outright denial of benefits coming to these young men and women because they simply don't know about it," says Gorman.

The army cannot be expected to keep badly disabled soldiers on active duty and no one is suggesting they're deliberately being kept in the dark. But even inadvertently denying them benefits is a wound they shouldn't have to suffer.

[HARDCORE]

DUDE -

A disabled soldier will never see combat again, but he might find himself fighting a new fight against the government's medical bureaucracy.

"No surprises here!"

The surprise (shock) comes in the form of disbelief that more people are not coming to the support of veterans so treated! This is truly a "DOMESTIC ATROCITY", no matter what spin (by either party) is applied!

"What in the Hell are these political poltroons thinking?" This is a foul betrayal that is being intensified by apathy and the bureaucratically mistaken belief that the "End Justifies The Means!?"

"For when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, he marks not that you won or lost, but how you played the game!" (Grantland Rice, 1880-1954)

For in Hades, neither title, wealth, earthly connections, or verbosity, will keep one from suffering the same fate as all who abandon their humanity in favor of self!!

VERITAS

[MORTARDUDE]

All :

As my fine southern brother, Sir Gimpy, has said on multiple occasions and in various ways, the folks in charge are anti-veteran anyway you look at it. It took me awhile to understand the depth of it, but I do now. Thanks Gimpy !!

Larry

[blues clues]

I've been helping a friends son through the paper work it's a never ending battle just to get what he is due. I'm too old for all this.
razz

[SuperScout]

As I recall in what was not reported in the CBS story, is that the Army (all branches actually) are seriously relooking and rethinking the decades-old policy of medically retiring non-combat deployable veterans who have been wounded. This retiring mentality is nothing new, having been around since at least WWI days, but at last report, the President is rethinking this apparent waste of trained, dedicated and motivated personnel. After the attornerys get through massaging the details, I'll wager that a new policy takes effect, allowing an amputee, for example, to stay on board irrespective of the wounds, if he can do the duty.

[Gimptster]

words Larry. As long as we can all stand together on the issue of justice and fairness for military veterans and their families we will all gain from it.

Best to you my southern brother.