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.


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Suckers trusting in this gov't will get what they deserve. The fedgov
is endangering us all, as well as stealing our money.