Wounded billed for hospital food (for real)

[donsu]

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/09/11/Worldandnation/Wounded_billed_for_ho.shtml

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.

-snip-

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.
-snip-
--------------------------------

he left a part of his body and peace of mind in a foreign land and we make him pay for his in-hosp. food. and Halliburton/bloody/hands/bushgang stuffs their pockets with trillions.

[montanacowboy]

1. It's just the Motto:

"It's the Republican Way".....

everytime I see or read or hear something like this, I just tell myself, it's the Republican Way! this should be repeated ad nauseum until people connect everything that is wrong with our country with the right wing sickness.

[KamaAina]

2. Support our troops! Call the Repukes on this crap

every chance we get.

[tom_paine]

3. That is SOOOO Imperial!

We should just cut to 2050 and rent some Cyber-Hessians.

What a fucking disgrace. But certainly par for the course in the grotesque appartion that Bushevik-Occupied Imperial Amerika is becoming.

(and the transition is FAR from over...just wait until Lame-Duck Fuehrer in 2005)

[blm]

4. Geez...this is BULLSHIT.

Make sure to send this article to your local papers, especially those of you who live in military states like NC, SC, Texas, Georgia, etc...

[Red_Viking]

5. Let's take up a collection

I'm not kidding. I'd gladly donate. Compared to the billions the fascists at Halliburton are raking in, this is peanuts. No pun intended...

Let's collect the money, pay the hospital, and sign it, "From your free-thinking, liberty-loving buddies at DemocraticUnderground.com."

RV

[Q]

6. Bush* is running this country like a business...

...HIS business.

[greenwow]

7. Good

Maybe it will encourage them not to lounge in a hospital for so long.

[Ekaterina]

8. Disgusting

So if the law was passed in 1981 that was Reagan's watch and it has been enforced all this time since then I wonder how many servicemembers during Gulf I and then the Balkan conflict have been shafted by this piece of twisted thinking?? Not only should they repeal the law, they should refund the money they took from the injured. With interest.

[Melsky]

9. "Support our troops"

Could it be that this phrase actually means "support war and screw our troops"?

This makes me really sick.

[curlyred]

10. this is posted at Free Republic too

I saw this article at Buzzflash this morning and sent it to my SO, who enjoys his daily argument with the freepers enormously......he posted it there. See their comments:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/981313/posts

[OldSoldier]

11. The collection agency part is what I can't figure out...

Blame this on Bush's privatization efforts, not the Army Medical Department charging patients for their meals--they've done that at least since 1981. (That's when I went to basic, and when Senior Drill Sergeant Simental, during our "military benefits" class, summed up the policy with "you ain't gonna believe this shit, but...")

In the Army I was in, one that charged you for hospital food, if you didn't pay a bill they just recouped it directly out of your pay. There wasn't any collection agency bullshit--and I'm going to have to dig out my copy of the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act to see what Bush has done to it.

I also have to dig out the Navy Ration Law as it stood in 1999 and compare it to the Navy Ration Law as it stands now, just to make sure Bush hasn't put our sailors back on hardtack to save the BFEE money. I would not put it past him to do this. (Yes, there is a law that says how sailors are to be fed.)

[Gin]

12. It was SOP in the past...and I guess it hasnt changed....in the

Navy...if you were hospitalized but were ambulatory...you cleaned your won room too.

[donsu]

13. if you find out things have changed, please let us know

thanks