WP: A Wife's Battle - Rural WV Wife's Battle for Care for her PTSD husband

[RamboLiberal]

Michelle Turner's husband sits in the recliner with the shades drawn. He washes down his Zoloft with Mountain Dew. On the phone in the other room, Michelle is pleading with the utility company to keep their power on.

"Can't you tell them I'm a veteran?" asks her husband, Troy, who served as an Army scout in Baghdad and came back with post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Troy, they don't care," Michelle says, her patience stretched.

The government's sweeping list of promises to make wounded Iraq war veterans whole, at least financially, has not reached this small house in the hills of rural West Virginia, where one vehicle has already been repossessed and the answering machine screens for bill collectors. The Turners have not been making it on an $860-a-month disability check from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/13/AR2007101301426.html?hpid=topnews

This little piece of this government doesn't care really stood out for me.

The VA mileage rate has not changed since 1977. While a federal worker gets 48.5 cents per mile, a disabled veteran is still paid 11 cents a mile. Michelle steps to one window and gets a receipt for $14.52. At the next window, $6 in government "deductibles" are taken out, bringing the grand total to $8.52.

[EFerrari]

1. When "the troops" morph into "the mentally ill", they're toast.

I hate this dysfunctional system.

[aquart]

2. No one who has worn the uniform of this country should EVER

have a medical bill. I don't care if it's hangnail. I don't care if it's tennis elbow. There is NO EXCUSE for giving them or their families one extra second of worry or stress. NONE.

[kimmylavin]

3. Support the troops, my ASS.

I cannot believe the nickel-and-dime routine they do on these soldiers and their families!