posted 10-01-2003 04:49 AM            

Wounded billed for hospital food
By BILL ADAIR, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 11, 2003

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WASHINGTON - After a grenade exploded inside his Humvee in Iraq, Marine Staff Sgt. Bill Murwin was treated at a military hospital in Germany and spent four weeks at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Part of his left foot was amputated.

His medical care was free, but the government billed him $243 for the food.

Then, just three days after he received his first bill for the hospital food in Germany, he got a stern letter saying the bill was overdue. It warned that his account would be referred to a collection agency.

Murwin, like thousands of other military personnel hospitalized every year, is expected to reimburse the government $8.10 per day for food. That's standard procedure because of a law Congress passed in 1981. But it has angered many military families over the years.

When Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Largo, and his wife, Beverly, heard about the problem, they personally paid Murwin's tab. Then the congressman introduced a bill to change the rules.

Rep. Young said Wednesday that the soldiers "were sent to war by their country. Many of them will be handicapped for the rest of their lives - and we're asking them to pay $8.10 a day for their food! There's something really wrong with that."

The practice is especially egregious, Young said, because "the food probably isn't that good."

The rule was established because most military personnel receive $8.10 a day as a "basic allowance for subsistence" for food. But when they are hospitalized, the government tries to recoup the money on the theory that they are eating hospital food and therefore are double-dipping.

Military officials have long disliked the rule but felt they had to enforce it because of the 1981 law.

"If I could be king for a day, I'd stop it in a minute," said Maj. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who commands the Army hospitals in the eastern United States.

The government already bends the rules for soldiers in combat. They are allowed keep the $8.10 even though they are also getting free food, according to Young's office.

Murwin, 31, a sheriff's deputy in Nevada with 10 years of active duty in the Marines and three years in the Reserves, says he was flabbergasted the government would bill him.

"Holy smokes," he said. "I'm in the hospital - and they're going to charge me for my food?"

He says he was willing to pay but thinks it's unfair that young soldiers get billed.

"What made me so hot is that (it applies to) privates and lance corporals - guys who barely make enough money to pay for their own food, let alone take care of this," Murwin said.

Kiley, the Army medical commander, said the costs can add up. "If you're here for a couple of months, you could rack up a thousand dollars," he said.

Young, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said he was unaware of the law until his wife heard about it from Murwin's father-in-law. He has quickly lined up support for his bill, which would reverse the rule so military personnel do not have to pay.

His staff hasn't had time to estimate the cost of the bill, Young said, but the government has an obligation to pay for the food of injured soldiers.

The bill has 96 co-sponsors and has been endorsed by associations that represent enlisted personnel. Because of the strong support, the bill is likely to sail through Congress in the next few weeks.

Kiley said that he is glad to see the bill and that it has wide support in the military. But he disagrees with Young's unfavorable assessment of the hospital cuisine.

"It really is pretty good food," Kiley said. "It's not the same as a four-star restaurant. But we work pretty hard at it."

Murwin concurred, but said his taste buds had been dulled by weeks of eating field chow - called MREs (for Meal, Ready to Eat) - in Iraq.

"I was expecting the worst" from the hospital food, he said. "I was pleasantly surprised. I actually got a steak dinner one night."

- Bill Adair can be reached at 202 463-0575 or adair@sptimes.com
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/09/11/Worldandnation/Wounded_billed_for_ho.shtml

And again...

Soldier must pay for his trip home

We are usually quiet individuals, expressing little about world events and politics, etc. However, we have to stand up and say something now.

Our son-in-law is in the Army, serving our country for several months in Iraq. He was recently authorized to return home for two weeks. We are all grateful for this news! However, there is one catch _ he has to pay for the journey!

How can the government expect him to pay his own airfare? It seems unfair the government won't foot the bill to send troops home, after they risk their lives for our country. They have had to leave their families struggling emotionally and some financially. Then when they do have the opportunity to come home briefly, they are expected to pay their own way.

This is an atrocity! And, too often, there is no way some of these families can afford the airfare.

Our country is spending a fortune on behalf of another country. But, our fighting forces should be the main priority, including traveling home for a reprieve. We truly believe our armed forces should be rewarded with a paid visit to their loved ones. Don't you?

Randy and Pam Forcier
Spokane
Spokane, WA
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news/letters.asp?date=092803&id=l16340

posted 10-01-2003 01:26 PM            

[quote:]
[That's standard procedure because of a law Congress passed in 1981. But it has angered many military families over the years.]

[quote:]
[Our country is spending a fortune on behalf of another country. But, our fighting forces should be the main priority, including traveling home for a reprieve. We truly believe our armed forces should be rewarded with a paid visit to their loved ones. Don't you?]

I agree.

posted 10-02-2003 09:44 AM            

Families chip in for flak jackets

02.10.2003
By ANDREW GUMBEL in Los Angeles
United States soldiers in Iraq are so short of up-to-date flak jackets - often the difference between survivable injury and death in combat - that their families back home have begun buying them out of their own pocket.

Campaigners for military families opposed to the continuing occupation angrily denounced the lack of adequate protection yesterday, calling it "outrageous" and part of a pattern of general failure to provide adequate supplies to the troops almost five months after the formal end of the war in Iraq.

Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has acknowledged the shortage of up-to-date Kevlar jackets but said he could not promise to have them universally available until December.

Many - perhaps most - soldiers are wearing Vietnam-era flak jackets, which are heavier and unable to withstand rounds from AK-47 automatic rifles, the most common ammunition in Iraq.

"The word cannon fodder keeps coming to mind," said Charlie Richardson, co-founder of the group Military Families Speak Out.

"This shows a fundamental lack of respect for the military. If you don't take care of your troops in these basic ways, you're really saying they're throwaway."

Richardson's group has received numerous stories of mothers spending hundreds of dollars on either jackets or individual protective plates for their sons in Iraq.

One sergeant with the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, Zachariah Byrd, recently survived being shot four times by an AK-47, thanks to a kind fellow soldier who lent him his Kevlar Interceptor jacket. The jacket he had been issued probably would not have saved his life.

"For many GIs, Iraq appears to be a strictly BYOB war - Bring Your Own Bulletproofs," Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington Law School, wrote this week.

He estimated the cost of updating the flak jackets at less than US$100 million.

posted 10-18-2003 11:31 AM            

Sick, wounded U.S. troops held in squalor
By Mark Benjamin
UPI Investigations Editor
Published 10/17/2003 3:36 PM
View printer-friendly version

FORT STEWART, Ga., Oct. 17 (UPI) -- Hundreds of sick and wounded U.S. soldiers including many who served in the Iraq war are languishing in hot cement barracks here while they wait -- sometimes for months -- to see doctors.

The National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers' living conditions are so substandard, and the medical care so poor, that many of them believe the Army is trying push them out with reduced benefits for their ailments. One document shown to UPI states that no more doctor appointments are available from Oct. 14 through Nov. 11 -- Veterans Day.

"I have loved the Army. I have served the Army faithfully and I have done everything the Army has asked me to do," said Sgt. 1st Class Willie Buckels, a truck master with the 296th Transportation Company. Buckels served in the Army Reserves for 27 years, including Operation Iraqi Freedom and the first Gulf War. "Now my whole idea about the U.S. Army has changed. I am treated like a third-class citizen."

Since getting back from Iraq in May, Buckels, 52, has been trying to get doctors to find out why he has intense pain in the side of his abdomen since doubling over in pain there.

After waiting since May for a diagnosis, Buckels has accepted 20 percent of his benefits for bad knees and is going home to his family in Mississippi. "They have not found out what my side is doing yet, but they are still trying," Buckels said.

One month after President Bush greeted soldiers at Fort Stewart -- home of the famed Third Infantry Division -- as heroes on their return from Iraq, approximately 600 sick or injured members of the Army Reserves and National Guard are warehoused in rows of spare, steamy and dark cement barracks in a sandy field, waiting for doctors to treat their wounds or illnesses.

The Reserve and National Guard soldiers are on what the Army calls "medical hold," while the Army decides how sick or disabled they are and what benefits -- if any -- they should get as a result.

Some of the soldiers said they have waited six hours a day for an appointment without seeing a doctor. Others described waiting weeks or months without getting a diagnosis or proper treatment.

The soldiers said professional active duty personnel are getting better treatment while troops who serve in the National Guard or Army Reserve are left to wallow in medical hold.

"It is not an Army of One. It is the Army of two -- Army and Reserves," said one soldier who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, during which she developed a serious heart condition and strange skin ailment.

A half-dozen calls by UPI seeking comment from Fort Stewart public affairs officials and U.S. Forces Command in Atlanta were not returned.

Soldiers here estimate that nearly 40 percent of the personnel now in medical hold were deployed to Iraq. Of those who went, many described clusters of strange ailments, like heart and lung problems, among previously healthy troops. They said the Army has tried to refuse them benefits, claiming the injuries and illnesses were due to a "pre-existing condition," prior to military service.

Most soldiers in medical hold at Fort Stewart stay in rows of rectangular, gray, single-story cinder block barracks without bathrooms or air conditioning. They are dark and sweltering in the southern Georgia heat and humidity. Around 60 soldiers cram in the bunk beds in each barrack.

Soldiers make their way by walking or using crutches through the sandy dirt to a communal bathroom, where they have propped office partitions between otherwise open toilets for privacy. A row of leaky sinks sits on an opposite wall. The latrine smells of urine and is full of bugs, because many windows have no screens. Showering is in a communal, cinder block room. Soldiers say they have to buy their own toilet paper.

They said the conditions are fine for training, but not for sick people.

"I think it is disgusting," said one Army Reserve member who went to Iraq and asked that his name not be used.

That soldier said that after being deployed in March he suffered a sudden onset of neurological symptoms in Baghdad that has gotten steadily worse. He shakes uncontrollably.

He said the Army has told him he has Parkinson's Disease and it was a pre-existing condition, but he thinks it was something in the anthrax shots the Army gave him.

"They say I have Parkinson's, but it is developing too rapidly," he said. "I did not have a problem until I got those shots."

First Sgt. Gerry Mosley crossed into Iraq from Kuwait on March 19 with the 296th Transportation Company, hauling fuel while under fire from the Iraqis as they traveled north alongside combat vehicles. Mosley said he was healthy before the war; he could run two miles in 17 minutes at 48 years old.

But he developed a series of symptoms: lung problems and shortness of breath; vertigo; migraines; and tinnitus. He also thinks the anthrax vaccine may have hurt him. Mosley also has a torn shoulder from an injury there.

Mosley says he has never been depressed before, but found himself looking at shotguns recently and thought about suicide.

Mosley is paying $300 a month to get better housing than the cinder block barracks. He has a notice from the base that appears to show that no more doctor appointments are available for reservists from Oct. 14 until Nov. 11. He said he has never been treated like this in his 30 years in the Army Reserves.

"Now, I would not go back to war for the Army," Mosley said.

Many soldiers in the hot barracks said regular Army soldiers get to see doctors, while National Guard and Army Reserve troops wait.

"The active duty guys that are coming in, they get treated first and they put us on hold," said another soldier who returned from Iraq six weeks ago with a serious back injury. He has gotten to see a doctor only two times since he got back, he said.

Another Army Reservist with the 149th Infantry Battalion said he has had real trouble seeing doctors about his crushed foot he suffered in Iraq. "There are not enough doctors. They are overcrowded and they can't perform the surgeries that have to be done," that soldier said. "Look at these mattresses. It hurts just to sit on them," he said, gesturing to the bunks. "There are people here who got back in April but did not get their surgeries until July. It is putting a lot on these families."

The Pentagon is reportedly drawing up plans to call up more reserves.

In an Oct. 9 speech to National Guard and reserve troops in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Bush said the soldiers had become part of the backbone of the military.

posted 10-22-2003 03:28 PM            

The Pentagon's Achilles Heel

Steven Rosenfeld is a senior editor for TomPaine.com.

This past weekend, United Press International's Mark Benjamin—assisted by Steven Robinson of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veteran's advocacy group—broke the story that hundreds of injured Iraq War veterans were stranded in dismal barracks at Ft. Stewart, Ga., while they were awaiting medical care.

"They're being treated like dogs," is how one officer who didn't want his name used put it, speaking to TomPaine.com before the UPI story broke. "There is not a smile on this sector of the post. I have never seen as many sad people in one place in all my life."

The situation described by this officer and by UPI was one where injured National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers were languishing while waiting for military doctors to fully diagnose their injuries and do the paperwork for future medical benefits. The veterans—some with injuries that will become lifelong disabilities—were living in large barracks with double bunk beds and no indoor plumbing. Soldiers who paid $10 day could get a smaller, shared room with air conditioning and a bathroom.

"I've been in [the military] for 30 ½ years and never thought the Army would turn on its own like this," said First Sgt. Gerry Mosley, of the National Guard's 296th Transportation Company from Brookhaven, Miss. "I am not in a case by myself. They are telling you it's going to be four to six months if you're going through a medical evaluation."

The account given by Mosley and other soldiers at Ft. Stewart is at odds with the support-the-troops rhetoric from top Pentagon and White House officials. Yet it's part of a pattern of lapses in military health policies that have occurred during the course of the Iraq War.

In recent weeks, two separate congressional investigations by the General Accounting Office (GAO-04-158T and GAO-03-1171T) concluded the Army and Air Force largely ignored a 1997 law requiring all soldiers sent to war zones be given extensive pre- and post-deployment medical exams—to avoid the unexplained medical problems that arose after the 1991 Persian Gulf War that became known as "Gulf War Syndrome."

Moreover, the months-long delays in getting medical care faced by the soldiers at Ft. Stewart are nearly identical to the delays faced by veterans of other wars as they seek care in the Veterans Administration health system. Fully funding the VA is a top priority of veterans' groups, who say the 2004 VA budget pending before Congress is under-funded by $1.8 billion.

"This is about what the administration says versus what they do," said Robinson, who is executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center.

But following the publication of UPI's story on Friday, Oct. 17, Mosley said the senior officers at Ft. Stewart met with the soldiers quoted in the news account and then started making basic improvements to the living conditions. Over the weekend, partitions were put between toilets and bunk beds, he said. Mosley also was told more doctors will be brought in.

Robinson, who repeated the story on CNN on Monday, Oct. 20, is bringing congressional investigators to Ft. Stewart on Tuesday, Oct. 21.

The Bigger Picture

Whether the situation at Ft. Stewart is the norm or an anomaly at military bases housing soldiers injured in Iraq is not known. The Pentagon has not commented. Ft. Stewart is only one base where injured troops from Iraq have been sent, according to soldiers and veterans' activists contacted.

It's also hard to determine how many soldiers have been injured in Iraq because, again, the Pentagon has not fully disclosed those numbers. Another UPI report, on Oct. 3, said nearly 4,000 soldiers had been medically evacuated from Iraq for non-combat reasons, quoting the Army Surgeon General's office. Those numbers have not been updated.

Some soldiers say the military has been downplaying these statistics. Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia of Miami, who was back in the states during the recent two-week furlough, said the military was short of manpower in Iraq and wasn't always sending injured troops to Kuwait or back to the states for medical care.

That was one factor contributing to low morale of troops in Iraq, he said, a trend that was confirmed in a mid-October poll conducted by Stars and Stripes, a government-published military newspaper.

Meanwhile, soldiers like Sgt. Mosley have been languishing at Ft. Stewart since last spring. Mosley, 48, served in the Army for three years and has been in the reserves for 27 years. He said he was injured when he jumped off a truck that came under Iraqi attack in the first hours of the war. He kept going and was further hurt after diving into a foxhole to avoid more Iraqi fire.

Before the war, Mosley said he could run two miles in 17 minutes. Today, he said he can barely walk or sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time. He got to Ft. Stewart on May 26 and was put in what's called "medical hold."

At first, he lived in a large cement barracks with no air conditioning, where he and 50 other injured soldiers slept in bunk beds. He said he's been paying $10 a day for an air-conditioned room he shares with two other men.

Mosley said his medical issues were still unresolved. He said he has waited for weeks to see specialists and doctors, but their diagnoses and resulting treatments have not helped. Mosley also said he's been pressured to sign papers to confirm those diagnoses, which could limit his future veteran's benefits. Mosley said he refused to do so.

Worse yet, Mosley said soldiers like him—from the National Guard and Army Reserves—weren't getting the same attention or treatment as soldiers from the fulltime active-duty military. He finds that double-standard galling.

"When the Iraqis started coming in on us, when the bullets started flying, they didn't say I didn't mean to fire on you—you're a reservist," he said. "We're being treated so differently from the active duty troops, it's not funny."

Mosley's story isn't unique. Sgt. Willie Buckles, with 28 years of service, was injured in the same Iraqi mortar attack as Mosley. "I came back on the fifth of May. I still don't know what my pain is," he said.

But Buckles has a good idea why he hasn't gotten the care he needs. "I don't believe they planned for it," he said. "They don't have enough doctors and facilities to take care of them." Buckles believes the Pentagon didn't plan for extensive casualties in Iraq. On the other hand, the Pentagon ignored the one law Congress passed after the military's mishandling of Gulf War Syndrome: a 1997 order (PL105-85) requiring detailed medical records for every soldier sent to war.

Two recent reports by Congress' General Accounting Office concluded the Army and Air Force didn't do that before the Iraq war. Several congressional staffers who work on the issue said they still don't know if the Pentagon was complying with medical records law, even as tens of thousands of new National Guard troops are being sent to Iraq.

Last spring, after coming under congressional criticism for not following the 1997 law, the Pentagon's point man on the issue, Under-Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs William Winkenwerder, announced the Pentagon would expand the questionnaire used by the military for post-deployment screening.

What's also notable about the lengthy delays faced by soldiers at Ft. Stewart is that they are approximately the same length as those faced by veterans of other wars in the VA health system. While the injured soldiers at Ft. Stewart are not yet in the VA system, veteran advocates note that the VA has been under-funded for years by the current administration, including its 2004 budget now before Congress.

"You used us. Now don't abuse us," was how Woody Powell of Veterans for Peace put it, summing up the attitude of veterans seeking better government health care.

posted 10-22-2003 04:58 PM            

As one of those permanently disabled in the one we lost (Nixon and Kissinger surrendered during the Paris Peace Talks)

I can attest that Veterans' programs were best funded by the guilty draft dodger Bill Clinton and poorly funded by the Hollywood Film unit veteran Reagan.

Indifferently ignored and underfunded by Bush
the only navy pilot in his special entry program.

and dismally underfunded by the current "deserter-in=chief" W Bush.

Pray for W's continued health,
because Dick Cheney who was "too busy to serve" has a contempt for veterans,
shared by other elitists, who look down on all of us, who were unable to get cushy exemptions.
and even more contempt for those who,
like Gore and myself who refused exemptions and enlisted, then volunteered for duty in combat areas.

Two years ago.
I was the only veteran, at the VAMC, who stood and turned my back on the TV when W appeared.
Now half a dozen other brave veterans join me.
(in turning our backs on the guy who turned his back on us)

posted 11-16-2003 09:19 PM            

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 — Soldiers with the National Guard are already under the gun in Iraq and Afghanistan. But now a new government report claims that while the troops are fighting far from home, red tape is preventing many of them from being paid.

WHILE NATIONAL Guard soldiers fulfill their duty, risking their lives around the world, the Pentagon apparently is not living up to its obligation to pay them the right amount or on time. That’s according to a new congressional report obtained by NBC News, which finds the Pentagon’s pay process is such a mess it’s having “a profound financial impact on individual soldiers and their families.”
“This is well beyond anything I could ever imagine,” said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., “I would like to think if we send people off to war that we’re not going to have them worry about whether their home is going to be taken because they can’t pay their mortgage.”
One sergeant, who wanted his identity concealed, said when his unit was in Afghanistan chasing al-Qaida terrorists, every single soldier had pay problems — mostly late or missing checks.
“It was very frustrating,” explained the sergeant, “it distracted you from the job at hand.… You have to worry about whether your family has enough food on the table.”
In six Guard units examined by the General Accounting Office, a stunning 94 percent of soldiers had pay problems, including:
Under- and over-payments.
Three-month delays in active duty checks.
Pay and benefits cut off for wounded soldiers in the hospital.
“They were being told they weren’t entitled to certain health care benefits, in spite of their injuries,” explained Shays. “I mean, there’s no one in the military who justifies that, but it’s shocking that it could happen.”





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