Informant38

$8.10 a day
...one that's been around for 22 years. Would you believe that we bill wounded soldiers for their hospital food? We charge $8.10 a day. It's a decades-old practice, and as The St. Petersburg Times reports, if the bill isn't paid within days we throw that soldier to the collection agency wolves. C.W. Bill Young, the House Republican from Florida, has introduced a bill in Congress to end this loathsome practice.
Meanwhile, medical care for veterans, at least, is still free -- even if the Bush Republicans don't want veterans to know that, and have tried to cut the budget for veteran health care (by an amount less than what's set aside for Halliburton), and also want to cut combat danger pay, and to gut family separation leave, and reduce re-enlistment bonuses, and to strip away education funding for children of military families ... Oh, and they oppose increasing the $6,000 payment to families of soldiers killed in action; and have pretty much stolen money (again, for Halliburton) that American courts say belongs to American POWs who were tortured by the Saddam Hussein regime during the 1991 Gulf War; and they're skimping on everything else imaginable, from basic pay raises to military housing to sensible military-targeted tax relief.
�Matt Bivens/The Nation The Daily Outrage 09.12.03