How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits
Awhile back I argued that the military has in many ways become Bush's battered wife who smiles in public, enables his behavior but is getting the shit kicked out of her behind closed doors. The above story from Josh Kors in The Nation, which I heard this morning on Here and Now, details how the military has found a loophole that keeps it from having to pay disability benefits to soldiers wounded while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, the Bush Administration is beating his wife yet again.
Yup, you read it right. They are just flat out lying to save money. And it gets worse. Kors goes on to explain that if the soldier hasn't served out the full extent of the time he/she signed up for -- you know, having been discharged because he/she is no longer useful to the military -- the soldier then has to pay back a portion of his/her enlistment bonus. So, they come home disabled and actually owe the military money.But instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: They claimed Town's wounds were actually caused by a "personality disorder." Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits.
Town is not alone. A six-month investigation has uncovered multiple cases in which soldiers wounded in Iraq are suspiciously diagnosed as having a personality disorder, then prevented from collecting benefits. The conditions of their discharge have infuriated many in the military community, including the injured soldiers and their families, veterans' rights groups, even military officials required to process these dismissals.
They say the military is purposely misdiagnosing soldiers like Town and that it's doing so for one reason: to cheat them out of a lifetime of disability and medical benefits, thereby saving billions in expenses.
It's like a scheme hatched up by Mr. Burns himself (you know, from the Simpsons). Can't you just hear him going, "EX-cel-lent" and then turning to Smithers and shouting "release the hounds!"?
As I listened to Kors talking about doctors telling soldiers they were making stuff up and, in one case, getting so upset with a soldier when he questioned the doctor's diagnosis that the doctor kicked him out of his office, I was immediately reminded of what so many ME/CFIDS patients go through. Civilians have been dealing with this sort of crap from long-term disability insurance companies for years. True, they didn't become disabled while volunteering to, if need be, lay down their life for their country in combat, but the horror stories you hear about intrusive surveillance and company doctors denying anything is wrong with a patient who is clearly very ill are just as blood-boiling. Indeed, I suspect the military has become cocky after denying benefits to those with Gulf War Syndrome. They figured if they got away with that, why not try the "personality disorder" route?
2 comments:
My son wasn't injured in war; in fact, he never made it there. He was injured in boot camp and spent nearly 5 months there, most of the time in the medical rehab unit. He was returned to duty in spite of the fact that he wasn't completely healed and the physical therapist's objections as such. The guys that sign the RTFD orders are under a lot of pressure to get these kids out of medical rehab and back into training platoons.
The platoons don't want 'em back injured so what do they do? When my son returned to duty he was singled out and mistreated both physically and emotionally with what I'm convinced was an intent to break him. He received 'suggestions' from the drill instructor on how he could get himself discharged so that his injury would not become a lifetime disability.
The DI's would tell injured recruits that were returned to duty that they were going to work them so hard they would shred their broken bodies. They would say things like, "if I was a recruit with an injury like yours, I would say ...." The suggestions were anything from "don't give me a rifle, I might be mad enough to use it" or "I'm not suicidal but can think of ways to kill myself if I wanted to" to "I have an alcohol problem" or "I lied about my past medical history".
Eventually my son used one of those suggestions and was sent home. His discharge papers indicated that upon evaluation, he had a mental condition that existed prior to induction that he failed to present at his intake physical. In other words, they said he lied to get into the service.
Before they sent him home, he was put into a debriefing area that he said was like solitary confinement. When he WAS out, waiting to get a meal, see a doctor, or sign papers, every Marine that saw him told what a loser he was for not making it through boot camp and what a joke he was to the Corps. I believe this was said to embarrass him into never telling the truth about his discharge experience.
He's been home a couple of years now and jokes about it but it's not hard to read between the lines. They took an eager, strong, and confident young man and sent him home broken and lost. His physical strength returned quickly but it took him over a year to regain his self-confidence. He's not the only one with a boot camp story like this. Some never recover. I thank God my son was strong enough to rebuild his life. I understand they have to be tough, but what was the point of beating up a young man who was already broken?
It's a travesty the way our government treats the men and women who give their lives to defend this country. It's no surprise that many vets end up abusing themselves with drugs and alcohol. Why do they separate physical injuries from mental conditions anyway and why is a "mental" problem not covered? PTSD is as real as any physical injury.
The battered wife analogy is entirely appropriate.
Thanks, intuune, for sharing your son's story. He sounds like an amazingly strong person to be able to put a life together after going through such a horrific experience.
And I completely agree with you about how wrong it is to separate mental and physical disabilities and to deem one as more real than the other. Mental health patients in this country suffer severely because of the inequality in medical benefits accorded them.
Interestingly enough, Bill Reeves at the Centers for Disease Control who is in charge of studying Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, is also studying military recruits for "biomarkers" that will show who is more likely to have problems with the stressful situation boot camp entails. I'm not sure yet whether that's a good or bad thing.
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