WASHINGTON — Congress plans to act this week to change a practice that has annoyed and angered folks in the military for more than 20 years. It seems that most military personnel receive $8.10 a day as a food allowance — not exactly an extravagance.
Under current rules, injured troops who are hospitalized and able to receive free hospital food must reimburse the government for that $8.10 allowance.
This didn’t seem right to Staff Sgt. William Murwin, who was injured in Iraq after an Iraqi child dropped a grenade into his Humvee. The explosion sent Murwin to the hospital for 26 days and left him a partial amputee.
After the Marine reservist got back home to Nevada in July and to his job as a sheriff’s deputy, he was hit with a bill for $210.60 for his hospital food.
Many service members "will be handicapped for the rest of their lives," Rep. Bill Young, R-Fla., told the St. Petersburg Times, "and we’re asking them to pay $8.10 for their food!"
Young and his wife, Beverly, who has been active in helping injured military personnel, paid Murwin’s bill, and Young introduced a measure a few weeks ago to change the law so service members injured in combat or training won’t be charged for food.
He has inserted language in the fiscal 2004 defense appropriations measure, which would soon stop the bills from going out for one year. Young has 193 co-sponsors on legislation to change the law.
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