Reservists' Lost Benefits... Active-Duty Status Was Dropped, GAO Finds

Reservists' Lost Benefits Reported
Active-Duty Status Was Dropped, GAO Finds

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 18, 2005

Hundreds and perhaps thousands of injured Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers -- including many severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan -- have either lost or risked losing medical care and thousands of dollars in pay for months because a "convoluted" personnel system dropped them from active-duty status, according to a Government Accountability Office report released yesterday.

The report found that over a two-month period early last year, almost 34 percent of the 867 soldiers whose records it examined were removed from active duty while their requests for medical extensions were snarled in bureaucracy, leading many soldiers and their families to lose pay and benefits.

The Army does not track the numbers of injured and ill reservists suffering such gaps in pay and benefits, but with 16,000 reservists having passed through the military's "medical holdover" system since November 2003, and 3,400 there now, the total is "very possibly thousands," said Gregory D. Kutz, director of financial management and assurance at the GAO and author of the report.

~snip~

The main source of the problem, according to the GAO, Army officials and soldiers, was the obsolete Active Duty Medical Extension program, set up in July 2000 for reservists injured while on active duty or in training. The influx of wounded reservists from the Iraq war quickly overwhelmed the office, which had a staff of three people when it began receiving 25 to 30 cases for review every day in December 2003.

~snip~

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33627-2005Feb17.html

No respect for cannon fodder these days.

to start speaking out for themselves. Many of them voted for Bush thinking he actually cared about them. They need to find their voices and quit playing "good soldier" while the Bush cabal uses them for their own personal gain.