Service members and veterans severely injured in Iraq and Afghanistan have inspired two new initiatives to help them and their families through difficult times.
The first is a call center, with its title and phone number hard to memorize but worth the effort: the Military Severely Injured Joint Support Operations Center with care managers standing by at 888-774-1361.
A second initiative is traumatic injury insurance for the military. By Dec. 1, it will provide from $25,000 to $100,000 to service members or veterans injured severely. The payments will be retroactive, to Oct. 7, 2001, to cover members severely wounded in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Here are more details:
Severely Injured Center – It serves as a backstop to every other government program intended to help military personnel and veterans who suffer severe physical or mental wounds from war. If a severely injured veteran has hit a roadblock with finances, education, job assistance, counseling or child care, they can call the center. The goal is to prevent them from falling through the cracks of more well-publicized programs from the services, the Department of Veteran Affairs or any other federal agency.
Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary, established the center in December based on his own field experience. He frequented Fran O’Brien’s Stadium Steakhouse Friday evenings in Washington, D.C., where service members wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan who are recovering at nearby military medical centers can enjoy free dinners.
There Wolfowitz would hand out his business cards and invite the severely disabled to get in touch if they had problems. By October, he had gotten so many calls that he became concerned.
Though some services by then had their own programs to help severely wounded members, Wolfowitz decided the Defense Department must do more. He agreed to a new call center to back up service efforts, with registered nurses and social workers on the phones.
The goal, said Navy Cmdr. Dave Julian, the center’s manager, is to ensure seamless care and support for those veterans. The commitment is for years, not just months, and not just until the VA health care system assumes care.
Regardless of circumstances, injured personnel and veterans or their families can call the center for help, including assistance with medical appointments, arranging visas for family members who wish to visit from overseas, or coordinating transportation of patients through airports without painful security pat-downs.
Julian said the center was needed because of the “scope and scale” of injuries in Iraq or Afghanistan. Advances in field medicine have saved many lives that would have been lost in earlier wars. But the severity of injuries can mean longer, more costly and more difficult adjustment periods both for veterans and families.
Also, he said, some service programs got started late, months after the war in Iraq began, and some have been strapped for resources by the wars, which to date have left 2,500 to 3,000 severely wounded.
Traumatic Injury Insurance – Severely injured warriors from the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan also will get cash payments under a rider to Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance approved as part of the Emergency Supplemental Wartime Appropriations Act signed May 11.
The law directs the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to make payments retroactive to the start of the war in Afghanistan. Payments will vary based on the severity of injuries.
Three soldiers wounded in Iraq proposed the traumatic injury rider to Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, who in turn introduced it as an amendment to the wartime supplemental. Group life insurance premiums will be increased by $1 a month to pay for it.
Defense and VA officials are preparing regulations. Qualifying injuries will include loss of limbs, speech or hearing, severe burns, blindness, traumatic brain injuries or coma. Psychological impairments are not covered.
To comment, write Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120-1111, e-mail milupdate@aol.com or go to www.militaryupdate.com.
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