RUSH: Brenda, Tulsa, Oklahoma, thank you for waiting. It’s your turn on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Thank you so much for taking my call.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I’m a mother of military medically injured soldier from Iraq. He spent 14 months straight in Iraq, in the Army. He withstood more than 12 IEDs and came home with both of his feet and legs injured. Come November, he will have been medically discharged for three years and for those solid three years he’s not even been able to get his retirement or medical benefits as far as pay goes because they haven’t finished rating him. He has a torn ACL that has been torn for almost three years, and all they want to keep doing is giving him a cortisone shot or they put leg braces on him. He walks with a cane and they said within another year he’ll probably be in a wheelchair because they will not do surgery on a torn ACL. My husband and I paid out of our pockets to just go see a private medical person, for them to evaluate it and they said it’s torn.
It should have had surgery two-and-a-half years but because he is on government health insurance and government VA doctors, they will not do surgery until it’s totally torn apart. So he is getting injured and his health is getting worse and worse. So he is experiencing a health care system as it is going to be for everybody in the future. It costs too much to take care of our injured soldiers, so they just give them the medicine and they put a Band-Aid on it. And this is a son who is so patriotic that went over there because he loves his country. And it just makes us grieve. He cannot get a job because you go walking in to an employer at 28 years of age with crutches and leg braces, they don’t want to hire you. He cannot be accepted by private insurance because he’s got previous existing conditions caused by the war.
RUSH: I just want to understand something here. The Army or the government, whatever, manual for doing surgery on this torn ACL is that it has to be totally torn apart, ripped away from the bone, not just damaged this way? It’s not damaged enough to do surgery, is that what you said?
CALLER: That’s what the VA doctors are telling him, and he’s gone to three different VA doctors, and each one says, ‘Well, let’s give him more shots. Let’s give him more pain meds.’ He doesn’t want pain medication, he wants to fix it and he’s having to wear two full leg braces and special shoes because of the bones that were blown off due to bombs as it was.
RUSH: You know, I hear VA horror stories. I’ve toured Walter Reed in Washington.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: I’ve seen the unit where people have lost arms and legs being rehabbed and so forth. This is incredible. I’ve not heard this kind of horror story about the VA.
CALLER: Well, and, you know, when he was over there because he went through so many bombs he suffered a traumatic brain injury so he doesn’t go to a doctor visit alone. His wife goes with him or his dad goes with him to make sure he hears and understands the instructions and the reason, you know, totally, so that he’s not missing something and bless his heart his wife just literally got into an argument with the doctor last time because she’s saying, ‘What do we have to do for him to get health care?’ Because they won’t finish rating him until his treatments are done.
RUSH: Well —
CALLER: And at this rate it’ll never be done.
RUSH: This is a horrible story. Something doesn’t sound right about this and I’ve gotta go. I’m really up against it on time. I appreciate the call. Thank much. I have not heard horror stories like that.