From the Army Times - Army holding down disability ratings

Why would anyone want to join the Army when they don't help their Vets. I can see how this admin "supports the troops". With yellow ribbon magnets and lies:

Update: found this political cartoon by Mike Luckovich that fits right in here.

The Army is deliberately shortchanging troops on their disability retirement ratings to hold down costs, according to veterans’ advocates, lawyers and service members.

“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.

Snip

‘I couldn’t believe it’
Smith said he began hearing tales about two years ago of service members who said they were not getting proper disability ratings based on the VA Schedule for Rating — the document used by both the military services and the VA to determine percentage ratings for disabilities, which in turn sets compensation rates.

“I finally decided to take on a case myself,” Smith said. “It’s been a while since I took a case.”

He found an Army captain whose radial nerve in his right arm had been destroyed in Iraq — the same injury that has left Bob Dole, the World War II veteran and former Kansas senator, unable to use his arm to do more than hold a pen.

Smith followed the captain through the physical evaluation board process. He said that under the ratings schedule, this was an easy call: 70 percent disability. But at his first informal medical evaluation board, the captain initially was offered just 30 percent, and he had to fight to raise it to 60 percent through a subsequent formal evaluation board and then a final appeal.

“His first offer … I couldn’t believe it,” Smith said. “I was just incensed.”

Read the rest here