Army vet billed $3,000 for war wounds

[sabra]

Source: CNN

(CNN) -- Erik Roberts, an Army sergeant who was wounded in Iraq, underwent his 13th surgery recently to save his right leg from amputation. Imagine his shock when he got a bill for $3,000 for his treatment.

"I just thought it was bull---- that I'm getting billed for being wounded in Iraq doing my job. I always put the mission first, and now that I was wounded in Iraq, they're sending me bills," he said.

"I put my life on the line and I was wounded in combat, and I came back and they're not going to take care of my medical bills?"

It's a level of outrage shared by his mother, as well as the doctor who performed the surgery.

...

CNN on Wednesday contacted the office of Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Roberts' home state of Ohio who serves on the Senate's VA committee. Brown's office had not heard of Roberts' case, but immediately reached out to the soldier and alerted the VA about his situation.

In less than 24 hours, the VA got back to CNN. "The VA will be paying the bill," said VA spokesman Sean Nelson.


Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/26/wounded.warrior/index.html

[damntexdem]

1. And how many soldiers don't contact someone?

How many pay the bill?

It's the same when your health insurance rejects a reasonable claim. You may appeal and eventually win; but many won't appeal.

It's just another way to rip people off.

[Renew Deal]

2. I just don't understand stories like this.

There is no way that this should happen because this guy should be covered for life! It's completely fucked up that wounded vets have to deal with this stuff. If you sign up, and you get hurt on duty, taxpayers pick up the bill. And if that bill last for the rest of his life, so be it.

[Mr. Hyde]

8. The Army makes paperwork mistakes all the time.

My whole ANG unit received orders for Iraq one day via US Mail. It was a mistake made at division. Hundreds of soldiers received deployment orders. Imagine the stress this caused. Some soldiers didn't get the word that it was an error and showed up on the deployment day with their bags packed. They had gone as far as to tell their employers and their families that they were deploying to Iraq for 18 months. Oops!

[Robb]

21. Geez. That's astounding. nt

[HillbillyBob]

3. I had a friend who was a Viet Nam vet

He had been exposed to Agent Orange dozens of times he had a grocery list of health problems. I used to take him to the VA hospital in Miami, every trip was a fucking nightmare. It was an hour and a half trip each way, he would get there and they would say shit like you aren't eligible for this or that med they had prescribed for him. or your meds aren't ready youll have to come back next month or your appointment has been moved or cancelled you have to come back tomorrow or in 3 months. He had PTSD too, he finally committed suicide.......
I have two uncles that are disabled from using Agent Orange around Fort Leonard Woods border fences. They are listed with the VA as disabled, they also have to travel long distances for care. I don't know what kind of runaround they get.
My partners father was a VA patient too, they gave him a run around every trip too.

[saigon68]

20. Every Bit of your post is true

The VA in general is almost a Criminal Organization run by doctors on H-1B visas putting their time in, until they are elegible as citizens to go out and make millions a year scamming the amerikan public and various health insurers.


These scum bags come from assorted foreign countries. where they get their medical degrees from puppy mills.

I have seen better care and concern from the people who issue drivers licenses than this lot of thugs.

[HillbillyBob]

4. I had a friend who was a Viet Nam vet

He had been exposed to Agent Orange dozens of times he had a grocery list of health problems. I used to take him to the VA hospital in Miami, every trip was a fucking nightmare. It was an hour and a half trip each way, he would get there and they would say shit like you aren't eligible for this or that med they had prescribed for him. or your meds aren't ready youll have to come back next month or your appointment has been moved or cancelled you have to come back tomorrow or in 3 months. He had PTSD too, he finally committed suicide.......
I have two uncles that are disabled from using Agent Orange around Fort Leonard Woods border fences. They are listed with the VA as disabled, they also have to travel long distances for care. I don't know what kind of runaround they get.
My partners father was a VA patient too, they gave him a run around every trip too.

This is outrageous.

[jody]

5. "We are dealing with veterans, not procedures -- with their problems, not ours." Omar Bradley, VA

administrator.

Somewhere along the way Bradley's admonition as been forgotten.

[Mithreal]

6. Does this end the problem? Are there more Erik Roberts out there? nt

[DollyM]

7. Squeaky wheels get oiled . . .

VA bases their fees on the year before tax return so if you had a year of making over 35 thousand dollars, even if you are destitute today, you don't qualify. It is the stupidest system! My husband had a medical card since he had lost his job and was presenting it at VA each week thinking it was being billed for services. Then we got a bill for $250.00. When you are only bringing in $1000.00 a month in unemployment for a family, $250.00 might as well be a million dollars. I paid this bill for over a year, sending what I could and wrote both my Representative in Wisconsin and our representative in Illinois at the time (Barack Obama)as we were moving back to Illinois. I received two letters from Barack Obama telling me he would follow up on this and a few days ago I got a call from our local VA saying they had received a letter from our congressman at the time wanting to make sure that my husband would receive medical care from VA at no charge. After treating us like dirt for so long, the guy on the phone was bending over backwards saying they would adjust our income so there would not be further charges and how they wanted VA to be my husband's first choice for health care (yeah right!) and yada yada . . . I told him we still had medical cards and could see any Doctor we wanted with them in a timely manner and get could health care in the process rather than the cost cutter health care that VA offers. He said he would have their financial person follow up with us to make sure we would be able to utilize VA health care when he wanted. I thanked him and hang up. Then it occurred to me that just maybe having the President of the United States contact you about a Veterans health care, just might spur you into trying to make things right. (Our Wisconsin representative did not follow up though, I am sad to say.)

[Brgotn]

9. Me, too

The same thing happened to me but it was a simple clerical error as I suspect was the case here. I wouldn't condemn the system and the wonderful people in it for this.

[RedSock]

10. "I wouldn't condemn the system" -- I would.

"I wouldn't condemn the system"



I would. This crap happens way too often to be an honest mistake.

The military wants to get away with this as much as it can.

[Brgotn]

13. It's not a big deal

It took me 5 minutes to get it fixed. The military hospital I was at also treated civilians and retiree's. Unless you are predisposed to think bad about these people it's not a big deal.

[aquart]

11. How dare they.

But then, I am of the opinion that anyone in this nation's uniform should never pay a medical bill again. For any reason whatsoever.

[Thothmes]

14. So two year of typing up legal documents

at the Naval Station in Memphis Tennessee entitles you to life long medical care at the taxpayers expense.

[aquart]

15. Yep.

[Thothmes]

19. Have to disagree

Millions of men and women have served in the Armed forces since the end of WWII. The vast majority never saw combat, never suffered any harm, were never in any way impared by their terms of service. I do not see any good rational for providing them with life long free medical care. By all means we
owe those men and women who served and were in some way injured or sickened by their service the medical care to correct or mitigate there ills. But free medical care by virtue of having worn a uniform for two years is hardly practical. JMO

[sammytko]

12. i guess it depends on where you live.

the VA system in San Antonio is great. i'm 60% and my SO is 100%. we use VA exclusively. We also have dental. i have a dental condition so i qualify. I don't understand the problem the other states have. Even our friend who is a vet, but not rated goes to the VA and pays a 20 dollar co-pay.

[baldguy]

16. We need nationalized heathcare.

[unkachuck]

17. and $3000....

...is what?....about 10 seconds duration in the pentagons' yearly toilet paper budget?....why does the system have to always chump the little guy?....fatcats steel billions, politicians graft millions, the pentagon wastes trillions but the little guy who keeps these schmucks in their corruption, has to pay $3000 after they fuck him up....

....far be it for me to be a proponent of anything military, but this doesn't make sense on many levels....

[ConcernedCanuk]

18. This should NEVER happen. - I disagree with the USA's aggressive wars,

.
.
.

but for those that participate in the belief they are protecting their country,

and get wounded, either physically or emotionally

should be granted the BEST medical care available.

I know this is NOT the case - I lived in San Diego 79-80,

had the experience of visiting one of the VA hospitals twice;

disgusting places really.

From what I've read here lately,

NOTHING HAS CHANGED

(sigh)

[47of74]

22. Army vet billed $3,000 for war wounds

Source: CNN

(CNN) -- Erik Roberts, an Army sergeant who was wounded in Iraq, underwent his 13th surgery recently to save his right leg from amputation. Imagine his shock when he got a bill for $3,000 for his treatment.

"I just thought it was bull---- that I'm getting billed for being wounded in Iraq doing my job. I always put the mission first, and now that I was wounded in Iraq, they're sending me bills," he said.

"I put my life on the line and I was wounded in combat, and I came back and they're not going to take care of my medical bills?"

It's a level of outrage shared by his mother, as well as the doctor who performed the surgery.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/26/wounded.warrior/index.html

---

I think it's bulls--t too. Like Brown's office said, it shouldn't take the intervention of a Senator for a wounded vet to get the care he needs.

[Deja Q]

23. The * devaluation and rules are still in effect. At some point these will need to be turned.

President Obama HAS done a lot so far. But there is a LOT left to do.

4 years.

[MADem]

24. There's more to this story than meets the eye. The operation cost NINETY GRAND.

He retired from the Army in October 2007, because of his war injuries, and enrolled in college last fall at Youngstown State University, majoring in finance and minoring in economics.

But in December, he says, a golf ball-sized lump appeared on his wounded leg. He says he went to a Veterans Affairs hospital and was told not to worry about it.

A few days later, he says, he went to the emergency room after the lump flared up more. A doctor there, he says, told him that the leg was badly infected and that it might have to be amputated.

Desperate for help, his mother contacted the Army surgeon who had saved her son's life two years earlier. That doctor referred him to Obremskey, the Vanderbilt surgeon.

The Robertses say the VA did not approve of them going outside the system. Erik Roberts says he had no choice -- it was have surgery or potentially lose his leg.

"I thought my leg was more important than the usual bureaucratic mess," he said.

His leg was saved. The $3,000 billed to Roberts wasn't for the surgery itself. It's a portion of the bill for six weeks of daily antibiotics to prevent the infection from coming back. His private insurance plan picked up the majority of the $90,000 in costs.

I think there was probably a bit of miscommunication going on here, or the antibiotic wasn't on the formulary. The story doesn't say if the guy tried to resolve the antibiotic issue during the six weeks while he was on the medication, or what. I'm thinking that he probably figured his insurance (and does he have private insurance in addition to Tricare or TFL? That is sometimes a drill in itself when you have "too much insurance") was covering the whole thing, and got hit with this medicinal "co-pay" after the fact.

It also sounds like the guy didn't work with the VA after the operation.

If you need emergency treatment, you CAN "get first, ask later" under Tricare or Tricare for Life. It's a bit of a drill after-the-fact, but it can be done and often is. If I had to guess, there was probably a little recalcitrance on both sides--foot-dragging by the VA, and slow follow-up by the patient.

I'm glad it worked out well for the guy, though.

[Optical.Catalyst]

25. Erik Roberts should forward this bill to George Bush for payment

Does anyone have chimpy's address in Dallas so that all veterans who get bills like this can send them to the person responsible.
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[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

26. That's what privatizing(?) the Armed Services is all about.

:mad: