Critics: Army Holding Down Disability Ratings - Army Times

[WillyT]

Critics: Army holding down disability ratings

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Feb 25, 2007 9:04:49 EST

<snip>

The Army is deliberately shortchanging troops on their disability retirement ratings to hold down costs, according to veterans’ advocates, lawyers and services members, and the Inspector General has identified 87 problems in the system that need fixing.

“These people are being systematically underrated,” said Ron Smith, deputy general counsel for Disabled American Veterans. “It’s a bureaucratic game to preserve the budget, and it’s having an adverse affect on service members.”

The numbers of people approved for permanent or temporary disability retirement in the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force have stayed relatively stable since 2001.

But in the Army — in the midst of a war — the number of soldiers approved for permanent disability retirement has plunged by more than two-thirds, from 642 in 2001 to 209 in 2005, according to a Government Accountability Office report last year. That decline has come even as the war in Iraq has intensified and the total number of soldiers wounded or injured there has soared above 15,000.

The Army denies there is any intentional effort to push wounded troops off the military rolls. But critics say many troops being evaluated for possible disability retirement accept the first rating they are offered during their first informal board — but that if they were to request a formal board, and then appeal the decision of that board, they would receive higher ratings.

The system is complicated — “unduly so,” the Rand Corp. think tank said in a 2005 report — and the counselors who advise troops often have insufficient training or experience. Service members also assume that after months spent in a war zone, the military will look out for them, critics say.

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Link: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/02/TNSmedholdmoney070222/

...the military will look out for them...

Apparently not, eh???

:mad:

[Olney Blue]

1. Something is terribly wrong in our military... our troops deserve better.

:grr:

[Webster Green]

2. Yes, and they have been doing this for a long time..

They try to discourage veterans by overwhelming paperwork and repeated denied claims. This crap has been going on for as long as I can remember. I'm sure it's even worse under the current gang of war-criminals, but this is not a new development, by any means.