Welcome to the Bungle

Why is THIS happening? And THIS?

I'm going to tell you, in part, why.

Whether by devious plan, or by sheer incompetence, it is now easier to live a life of relative ease on disability, than to work. It is certainly EASIER to do the disability shuffle than it ever has been before. Don't believe me?

I currently work for the DOD. I see active-duty service-members and their dependents. At the same time that it is becoming very difficult to get appropriate specialty care for our service-members that need it, it is increasingly EASY to be discharged from the service for medical reasons.

After all, the services are 'drawing down' anticipating that with Afghanistan 'ending' in 2014 there will be less need for a large military (North Korea and Iran are sure to come around, right?).

Here is a chart of disability payments for veterans.

If you are diagnosed with PTSD you get a 50% rating. Fair enough. But how exactly do you have PTSD without ever deploying and seeing combat? Also, if you DO have it from being yelled at, or from having to work long hours and carry a heavy backpack (or fire a scary rifle), how, exactly, is this something the military did to you, and not an inherent weakness in your character? Why should the rest of us pay for this? I digress.

Hysterectomy. 30%. What the hell? Explain this one to me. How does your military service have anything at all to do with your need for a hysterectomy? How are you disabled from this? And if the answer is that "it is the law that medical problems occuring while on service are automatically considered to be 'service related' " then the law is asinine.

And for those so inclined, how hard would it be, exactly, with providers with, shall we say, less than stellar training and motivation, to fake THIS?

Answer. Not hard. Ridiculously easy.

And how, exactly, is Obstructive Sleep Apnea either contagious OR a hazard of military service? If anything, keeping in good shape will DELAY the onset of OSA for most individuals. But OSA gives you  a 50% rating.

How many 21 year-olds come in requesting a sleep study? Answer, one or two a week. Just to ME. Freaking 21 year-old men and women. God help us.

Prognosis? Grave.

It's not so much the fact that they are actively engaged in deceit, it's the fact that they seem wholly un-bothered by this.

Just waved good-bye to a med-tech who informed me, without apparent embarrassment, that he was going to get on unemployment right away because he was sick of his job, and needs to study for the MCATs (so that he can get into medical school and go into psychiatry). Classic. We are, more and more, a nation of layabouts, and the military is creating more every day.

God help us.