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Be a US Veteran and be ignored (pg. 3)
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| ogvh5150 |
| quote: | Injured Troops Struggle to Get Health Care
by Joseph Shapiro
All Things Considered, April 20, 2007 · When service members are forced to leave the military by war injuries or illness, they face a complex system for getting health and disability benefits. Sometimes, health care gets cut off when new veterans find they need it most. Some retired soldiers and their families say they are worried that the Pentagon won't spend enough money to give the injured the care they deserve.
'10 Percent Disabled'
Tim Ngo almost died in a grenade attack in Iraq. He sustained a serious head injury; surgeons had to cut out part of his skull. At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., he learned to walk and talk again.
When he got back home to Minnesota, he wore a white plastic helmet to protect the thinned-out patches of his skull. People on the street snickered, so Ngo's mother took a black marker and wrote on the helmet: U.S. ARMY, BACK FROM IRAQ. On this much, everyone agrees.
But here is the part that is in dispute: The Army says Tim Ngo is only 10 percent disabled.
"I was hoping I would get at least 50 or 60 or 70 percent," Ngo says. "But they said, 'Yeah, you're only going to get 10 percent'... And I was pretty outraged."
When a service member is retired for medical reasons, the military's disability rating makes a difference. If Ngo had been rated 30 percent disabled or higher, he would have gotten a monthly disability check instead of a small severance check. He also would have stayed in the military's health-care system.
Instead, Ngo enrolled with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Typically, there's a waiting period for the VA.
In October, while he was uninsured, Ngo had a seizure, caused by his war injury. He remembers being outside and blacking out; he fell to the ground on the driveway.
"My girlfriend was freaking out because she didn't know what to do," Ngo says. "She didn't know if I was going to die because I had hit the wrong side of my head."
An ambulance took Ngo to the nearest emergency room for treatment. It cost him $10,000. Ngo says that today, the bills for the incident are still unresolved.
Shrinking Numbers
Since that day, Ngo has gotten health coverage through the VA. Earlier this month, the VA said it would pick up his leftover bills from the emergency room.
The VA has been more generous than the Army all around. It rated Ngo as 100 percent disabled compared with the Army's 10 percent rating.
The VA gives him a monthly disability check, which helps with his finances; his head injury and post-traumatic stress disorder have prevented Ngo from holding on to even a simple job since he returned home.
Ngo's mother, Hong Wyberg, says the Army gives soldiers such as her son low disability ratings to save money.
"I don't fully think they were prepared for the length of time this war is going to last," Wyberg says. "They had no idea of how many injuries or the type of injuries that were going to come out of this."
Michael Parker retired from the Army in October, and he thinks Wyberg's suspicion is correct.
"The more I looked into it, I realized that this system does not have the soldier's back at all," says Parker.
Parker was a lieutenant colonel when he retired last year. Today, he has a disabling condition similar to rheumatoid arthritis. Parker was able to get the Pentagon's lifelong health coverage for himself and his family; he had been in the military long enough — for at least 20 years.
But Parker saw that a lot of other soldiers weren't as lucky, and it inspired him to become an advocate.
"I started posting questions and concerns and opinions on various blogs," he says, "and it just kind of mushroomed from there."
Parker started digging through Pentagon data, and the numbers he found shocked him. He learned that the Pentagon is giving fewer veterans disability benefits today than it was before the Iraq war — despite the fact that thousands of soldiers are leaving the military with serious injuries.
"It went from 102,000 and change in 2001... and now it's down to 89,500," says Parker. "It's counterintuitive. Why are the number of disability retirees shrinking during wartime?"
A 'Cost-Saving Device'?
Retired Army Lt. Gen. James Terry Scott heads a commission, set up by Congress, to study veterans' disability benefits. At a Senate hearing last week, Scott said that his commission had compared the way the Pentagon and the VA rated the same soldiers.
"The Department of Defense records were matched with VA records on 2.6 million veterans receiving disability compensation," Scott said. "Those rated zero, 10 or 20 percent [disabled] by the Department of Defense were rated in the 30 to 100 percent range by VA more than half the time."
In other words, troops often get small disability checks and no military health care when rated by the Pentagon's disability boards. But when they go to a VA board — with the same injuries — they get much more.
Scott said one reason is that the military's ratings determine whether a person is fit for duty, whereas the VA looks at all conditions that create health problems for a veteran. So the VA ends up rating more disabilities per retired service member.
But Scott said another reason may be that the Pentagon wants to keep down its costs.
"It is also apparent that the Department of Defense has a strong incentive to rate less than 30 percent, so that only severance pay is awarded," Scott said.
These numbers yielded some tough questions for Pentagon officials at the Senate hearing, such as Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.
"How do you respond to [the] assertion [that] the Department of Defense reduces disability ratings as a cost-savings device?" asked Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).
"I can tell you... there's no incentive to do that, senator," England replied. "I mean, maybe that's read into that. But I can tell you, we try to treat people fairly and accurately. And so there's certainly no incentive."
Pentagon officials conceded that the disability system doesn't work as well as it should. They admitted it is too bureaucratic and too often adversarial. They said they would listen to suggestions for change.
Navigating the System
But change in the future will come too late for many soldiers.
April Croft was serving in Afghanistan when she was diagnosed with leukemia. She was treated for a year at Walter Reed. The cancer seemed to go into remission and she was sent home.
"They told her that she was only eligible for a 10 percent rating with the illness of leukemia," says her husband, Mark Croft. "She was livid. She's actually contested that situation about three times already."
The Army never increased its 10 percent rating, but the VA rated her 100 percent disabled.
Croft spoke from his wife's room in a VA hospital in Seattle, where she recently underwent a bone-marrow transplant.
"The VA originally gave her 50 percent and upped it to 100 percent once... she got sicker," Mark Croft explains.
The VA provided the life-saving operation April Croft needed, but the low rating from the Army still mattered: The VA only covers veterans, not their families. It is the military health-care system that will insure an entire family — but only if the vet has a disability rating of 30 percent or more. April Croft has two young children, who are living with their grandparents in California.
Her kids eventually did get military health care — but only recently, after their mother married Mark, who is still in the Army. Mark and April wed in Reno in March. Afterward, he was given leave from the Army. Instead of taking off for a honeymoon, the newlywed couple drove to Seattle and checked into the hospital.
It's the kind of complicated arrangement that many veterans must make to navigate the military's complicated disability system.
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Article used without permission for educational, non-commercial use only. All rights reserved. |
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| MisterOpus1 |
Hi dumbass.
....Bye dumbass.
ing trolls. |
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| ogvh5150 |
Army suicides highest in 26 years
By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer
Wed Aug 15, 7:59 PM ET
Army soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, and more than a quarter did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new military report.
The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its scheduled release Thursday, found there were 99 confirmed suicides among active duty soldiers during 2006, up from 88 the previous year and the highest since the 102 suicides in 1991.
"Iraq was the most common deployment location for both (suicides) and attempts," the report said.
The 99 suicides included 28 soldiers deployed to the two wars and 71 who weren't. About twice as many women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan committed suicide as did women not sent to war, the report said.
Preliminary numbers for the first half of this year indicate the number of suicides could decline across the service in 2007 but increase among troops serving in the wars, officials said.
The increases for 2006 came as Army officials worked to set up a number of new and stronger programs for providing mental health care to a force strained by the longer-than-expected war in Iraq and the global counterterrorism war entering its sixth year.
Failed personal relationships, legal and financial problems and the stress of their jobs were factors motivating the soldiers to commit suicide, according to the report.
"In addition, there was a significant relationship between suicide attempts and number of days deployed" in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries where troops are participating in the war effort, it said. The same pattern seemed to hold true for those who not only attempted, but succeeded in killing themselves.
There also "was limited evidence to support the view that multiple ... deployments are a risk factor for suicide behaviors," it said.
About a quarter of those who killed themselves had a history of at least one psychiatric disorder. Of those, about 20 percent had been diagnosed with a mood disorder such as bipolar disorder and/or depression; and 8 percent had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, including post traumatic stress disorder — one of the signature injuries of the conflict in Iraq.
Firearms were the most common method of suicide. Those who attempted suicide but didn't succeed tended more often to take overdoses and cut themselves.
In a service of more than a half million troop, the 99 suicides amounted to a rate of 17.3 per 100,000 — the highest in the past 26 years, the report said. The average rate over those years has been 12.3 per 100,000.
The rate for those serving in the wars stayed about the same, 19.4 per 100,000 in 2006, compared with 19.9 in 2005.
The Army said the information was compiled from reports collected as part of its suicide prevention program — reports required for all "suicide-related behaviors that result in death, hospitalization or evacuation" of the soldier. It can take considerable time to investigate a suicide and, in fact, the Army said that in addition to the 99 confirmed suicides last year, there are two other deaths suspected as suicides in which investigations were pending.
Army suicides highest in 26 years
ARTICLE USED WITHOUT PERMISSION FOR EDUCATIONAL, NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY |
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| ogvh5150 |
| quote: | We will lose savings and home, says soldier's mother
· Parents make up shortfall for 'insulting' award
· MoD will not raise payout for severely injured son
Esther Addley
Saturday September 1, 2007
Guardian
The mother of a British soldier who was severely injured while fighting in Afghanistan has said she will lose her life savings and will have to sell her home because of the "insulting" compensation offer made to her son by the Ministry of Defence.
Lance Bombardier Ben Parkinson, 23, has been described as one of the most seriously wounded soldiers ever to survive. He lost both legs, suffered serious brain damage, fractured several vertebrae and sustained 34 further injuries when his vehicle struck a landmine in Helmand province last September.
Yet despite the severity of his injuries, which have left him unable to speak and unlikely ever to walk, he was awarded £151,150 compensation, less than half the maximum available under the Armed Forces compensation scheme.
Yesterday his mother, Diane Dernie, 49, told the Guardian that she and Ben's father, both of whom have remarried, would have to use their retirement savings to buy an adapted bungalow for their son when he leaves hospital. She and her husband Andy, 48, would also have to sell their home in Doncaster, she said.
The couple have given up their jobs to move to London to be close to the injured soldier. They say many military families will find themselves in a similar position if the awards system is not overhauled.
Mrs Dernie has spent the past week dealing with a media storm as her son has become the figurehead of a campaign for better treatment of injured soldiers.
Lord Guthrie, the former chief of defence staff, has described Ben's case as "terrible". "As a nation we really should be ashamed of the way we treat people like this," he said.
Mrs Dernie sought publicity as a last resort, she said, in a bid to embarrass the Ministry of Defence over the payout, which she said has left her "white hot angry". Under the Armed Forces compensation scheme only three injuries are taken into account when calculating an award.
Ben was deemed worthy of nothing for most of his wounds, including fractures to his pelvis, skull, cheekbones and jaw, and a severe injury to several vertebrae which has left his spine seriously deformed.
"How can you say, 'If this man has got three injuries we will compensate him to some degree for every injury that he has, but this man has got 37 injuries, so we will only pay for three - and we will pick which three they are'?"
The scheme, she said, is "specifically set up so that people with multiple injuries can't get large, cumulative sums".
"They don't expect Ben to survive, and others like him," said Mr Dernie, "so that's not a problem, that's a dead one. That's under a different scheme anyway. They can pay an even lower figure out. They don't look at actual needs of people."
An MoD review of the system is due to conclude next month, but it insists that Ben's award cannot be altered. It also said that he would receive a monthly tax-free payout on discharge that could amount to a further £1m over his lifetime.
Mrs Dernie is now seeking a judicial review, however, and argued that a new system should apply retrospectively to his case.
Ben was injured on September 12 last year and flown to the UK two days later. Since then Mrs Dernie has spent just eight nights at her home, travelling around the country as her tall, handsome son, now curled over a wheelchair, his hands clawed, has moved from hospital to hospital.
She and her husband are currently staying in a sparse military flat in south London. They are a quiet, unassuming couple, who though "devastated" by his injuries, recognised that "this happens".
"We said, Ben was a soldier. Ben wouldn't want to be moaning, we knew this. And we stuck to that religiously. But when we got the offer, it was just too much," she said. "It was the final straw."
Despite her profound reluctance, Ben always wanted to join the army, said Mrs Dernie. "He wanted to be what he called just a soldier."
He joined up when he was 16, and was in Iraq by 18, promoted to Lance Bombardier in the 7th Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery.
"I said to him, 'Ben, this isn't all running round jungles'," said Mrs Dernie, "you know, the worst could happen. You may have to fight. And he said, 'Oh, it'll never happen to me.' What they always say. 'And if you're dead you're not bothered anyway.' And I said to him, 'There are a lot worse things than being dead, Ben.' And that haunts me now. That haunts me.
Last week Ben was moved to the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre in Epsom, Surrey, for intensive therapy. Though doctors believed he would never emerge from a coma, he can now communicate using a computer and, apart from memory loss, his family insist his functions are intact. He has been told that because of the combination of his injuries it would be "some kind of miracle" if he walked again. "But that's the miracle that we want. That's the miracle that Ben wants," she said.
"Ben is a soldier. We aren't. We aren't in the army, but we are the ones who are going to be paying for this with our retirement and for the rest of our lives." |
Article used without permission for educational, non-commercial use only. All rights reserved. |
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| Tarpex |
So, I just guess there wouldn't be any idiots left that'd go to Iran with these kind of stories coming out...
Use the brainwashed plebs you've been feeding over-patriotic bull for the last years, make them bleed for you, and then throw them away, new wave of suckers is coming anyway. That's how the system goes huh? |
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| ogvh5150 |
Yeah of course it's that way. You have chickenhawks on the beltway, trolls in forums and "patriots" in the streets or on tv yelling out "Saddam's got to go" or "Ahmadinejad has to go".
Never once realizing that somehow somewhere someone has to pay for war in one fashion or another. |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by ogvh5150
Yeah of course it's that way. You have chickenhawks on the beltway, trolls in forums and "patriots" in the streets or on tv yelling out "Saddam's got to go" or "Ahmadinejad has to go".
Never once realizing that somehow somewhere someone has to pay for war in one fashion or another. |
Karma can be a bitch, though. All of the chickenhawks, trolls and blind patriots (and everyone else who harbors evil in their souls) will get theirs in the end. |
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| Magnetonium |
Hahah, just finished listening to a song that fits this discussion pretty well, all the way back from 1985, one of teh best electro songs ever ...
Paul Hardcastle - 19 (Full Length Album Version) ///or/// Radio Version
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| ams.rld |
| And how is that important? |
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| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by ams.rld
And how is that important? |
The lyrics, about the Vietnam veterans, and how they struggled after coming back from the war ;-) everyone hated them ... "child killers" was one of the labels. |
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| XaNaX |
| I love how our government treats our war veterans, especially those who are now disabled, like complete and then they wonder why enlistments are down |
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| Zharen |
| I can't believe that after reading reports on this from the past 3 years, this is still going on? Has it even gotten any better since? God help us if we get involved in another war that actually requires our presence. Because I'm not fighting anywhere except on my own soil. |
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