Former paratrooper fighting for disability benefits

By KEVIN MAURER, The Associated Press

FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- On good days, Cpl. Richard Twohig doesn't throw up or have to spend 12 to 14 hours hiding in bed with the shades drawn. The bad days come about once a week. The headaches are so bad, his knees buckle from the pain. Sometimes, his wife, Sang, has to help him into bed.

Twohig is a former Ranger and paratrooper who used to hunt, fish and play sports. He would dive under the hood of his car and make repairs or chase his 2-year-old son, Damon, or 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, around the yard.

Now, even on good days, too much noise or light brings on the headaches. Just the clanking of the weights at a fitness center on Fort Bragg makes him nauseated. His short-term memory constantly fails him, forcing him to have simple questions repeated. He has a constant ringing in his ears.

<snip>

He is unable to work and, like many injured veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was counting on the Army to provide him and his family with medical benefits. But lawyers representing some of those soldiers said the Army is making it difficult.

<snip>

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/ncwire_news/story/2405710p-8783765c.html

:sarcasm:

GOP has shown. I hate these people!!!:grr:

and with so many coming back blown away by what they've seen and done, it's reaching monumental proportions. This out of the article you linked says it best:

"They have a boots-on-the-ground mentality," he said. "You are a soldier. You have to buck up and go on with your life."

In other words tough shit buddy, get a grip and get going. How many Viet Nam vets never got going again after their hell war? The percentage of brain injuries and mental anguish is huge from the vets returning from Iraq. They can't just let them go, to rot away sick of heart and mind. If they were good enough to go and get bombed and shot at for dubya's war of choice, they're damn well good enough to get the proper care when they come home. Or is it, take your boots off and the U.S.A. forgets you ever existed?

Get together and get good lawyers or become one yourselves to take this government to task today! One who was in VN and even wounded, only last year was able to get the government to admit he was even in the military. Keep your records close or have them recorded in local courthouse if possible. Some veteran organizations will help with finding permanent safekeeping of military records. DON'T TRUST THE GOVERNMENT under this or any future administration! Over half the living Gulf War vets are in some form of disability recovery and this country will find it had to support the thousands coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. They got away with losing thousands of records of service personal in VN because it was such an undesirable war. Like the thousands that have died since Gulf War, many now will die before their records are ever found to prove they set foot on contaminated soil of those nations, of old diseases and modern (radioactive) roadside bomb, warfare.

help he needs. The other side of that coin is that just about everyone could identify people that they know who draw disability and run a cash side business or work for cash. Here is a man who is genuinely disabled and they will not give him the assistance that he needs. There are gross inequities in the system.

People with disabilities that are expensive need Medicaid, but may be able to work enough to actually pay their own bills, aside from medical expenses. However, the system is set up in many states so that making even $1 over poverty level will lose a person access to Medicaid. To avoid losing access to the only health insurance program that severely disabled people can rely on, a lot of them work off the books, since few people with qualifying disabilities can possibly earn enough to make up for the loss of Medicaid.

This vet needs better assistance, that's for sure. But what's happening to him is reflective of our entire medical safety net, not just the military's.

receive medicare and are running cash businesses that gross well.

http://www.onestops.info/article.php?article_id=102&subcat_id=8
does a good clear job of explaining income caps. It's better than it used to be, but people still lose benefits at income levels that can not possibly replace either Medicare or Medicaid.

If you know people who are indeed raking in money hand over fist, enough to pay for their medical needs, then you should report them. I don't know anyone like that, but I do know a lot of people who ought to be receiving aid, who really can no longer work, even people who will probably die in the next couple of years if they don't get help--and they ain't getting squat.

What's happening to our vets is a symptom of a pervasive social failing. I know a young man who was paralyzed because of medical malpractice when he was born--he never got physical therapy at any time in his childhood; his doctors were't interested in making that available for a Medicare patient, I suppose. I have met many people--some vets--who are out on the intersections at the end of every month begging because their $600/mo SSI or SSDI ran out, surprise, surprise. Somehow, I don't think those folks are reporting the cash they get begging, but I don't begrudge them whatever they manage to scrounge up.

Check out this quote from the article:


:banghead: :mad:

serve this country when the Government forgets you when you get home.

they so willingly send to their death and ruination.

and it they (the mal-administration) gets any money - here is what happens:

Iraq audit can't find billions
Gaps found in spending for reconstruction

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/10/16/iraq_audit_cant_find_billions?mode=PF

WASHINGTON -- About half of the roughly $5 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds disbursed by the US government in the first half of this year cannot be accounted for, according to an audit commissioned by the United Nations, which could not find records for numerous rebuilding projects and other payments.

One chunk of the money -- $1.4 billion -- was deposited into a local bank by Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq but could be tracked no further: The auditors reported that they were shown a deposit slip but could find no additional records to explain how the money was used or to prove that it remains in the bank.

Auditors also said they could not track more than $1 billion in funds doled out by US authorities for hundreds of large and small reconstruction projects.

The audit, released yesterday, found serious gaps in how the Development Fund for Iraq -- a pool of money drawn from Iraqi oil revenues and international aid, including some from the United States -- was handled by American occupation officials responsible for funding reconstruction projects and the operations of Iraqi ministries and provincial governments. The development fund is separate from the $18.4 billion in US reconstruction funds set aside last year to rebuild the country.

...more...

and there's even more missing - plus the $2.3 that the Pentagon just "lost".

the only money that gets spent goes to line the pockets of the thieves' friends - see Hell-a-burnin'

:argh:

I wish the flag-waving *Co supporters would start digging in their pockets to pay for the destruction that they have caused.