Defense Base Act and Your Credit Rating

Walter Reed Strong Arms over Hospital Bills

When my veteran husband agreed to go to "Post War" Iraq three and a half
years ago the last thing he expected was to be blown up and land in the
military medical system.
When I got the call that he was injured I immediately began making calls to
the insurance company that we pay more than $1,000 a month for medical
coverage to. I told them my husband had been injured overseas and was
relieved to find out that he could go to any hospital he chose and use any
doctors he wanted. He also had private insurance to cover medical
evacuation back to the States.
I knew nothing of the Defense Base Act coverage that was provided by the
company he works for and he was forced to use having been injured on the
job. The DBA insurance company had control of our lives, our finances.

I understand that he needed to go to the field hospital in Iraq and even to
Landstuhl due to the fact that the conditions in Iraq were much more
Warlike than Post War, but......
They kept him over in Landstuhl for four days despite his doctors pleas to
medivac him immediately to the States to catch the window of success
needed for his leg reconstruction. This was because he didn't have his
passport with him. I begged for the private medivac to please get him out of
there before he lost his leg. He watched the private Evergreen medivac
plane sitting on the tarmac as they loaded him onto the flying cattle truck
they use to haul our injured soldiers back to the States on. No one
deserves that flight but that's another story.

When he finally arrives at Walter Reed at 10:00 at night, five and a half
days after the explosion, I get a phone call that I need to arrange a private
medivac for him immediately because they cannot accept him there. He
didn't have his insurance information with him. While I was trying to do this I
received another call saying he was in surgery. He stayed there until he
was stable enough to be moved following the reconstructive surgeries.

Eight days after he entered the military medical system he tested positive
for Acinetobacter Baumanii. In addition to the setback they caused in his
reconstruction they apparently also gave him this potentially deadly
bacteria that he would eventually be overdosed on toxic drugs for.

The leishmaniasis they failed to diagnose attacked the traumatized area
and we again thought he was going to lose his leg. This was either
contracted from a sand fly bite in Baghdad or from the blood transfusions
he received in the field hospital. The staff in the field hospitals were
donating their own blood to cover the shortages.

Two years after this fiasco we receive a bill from Walter Reed for $1,200.
We thought this must be some smaller bill that fell through the cracks. It
took the insurance company another 7 months to pay the bill and it shows
to this day on our credit rating as a serious delinquency to the Treasury
Department.

Last month we received a bill for $35,000 for 17 days in his filthy,
contaminated hospital room which he shared with several other
unfortunates at Walter Reed. A small fraction of this bill was for other
services, few of which he even received. I was told that they had just gotten
around to billing. They sent this bill directly to their collection service,
bypassing the insurance company and even us, and this bill is now on our
credit rating as a serious delinquency to the Treasury Department.

Irony here is that the DOD has to pay the insurance company back every
expense they pay for his injuries and disabilities according to the terms of
the War Hazards Act which is attached to the Defense Base Act. The
insurance company also gets to keep the premiums it was paid every
month. The contractor includes the DBA insurance premiums in their
contracts.

Not a bad deal unless your the injured and disabled worker and/or the
taxpayer.

We received unpaid bills from labs and an ambulance company.

None of the people involved with this were concerned whether these were
taken care of or not.

We were the only ones whose credit report it was going on.