Sunday, June 17, 2007
Who cries for the contractor?
Just their families it seems. And I am not talking about the armed cowboys who shoot up everything in sight, but the truck drivers and other rear echelon civilians hired to do work in support of the military. In Iraq, there is no rear echelon and trucks are a prime target. As promised, they all were covered by insurance, and like all who have ever filed a claim, they are in for the fight of their lives, sometimes literally.
A Times investigation of a taxpayer-financed insurance system, based on reviews of scores of cases, has found a pattern of repeatedly blocked claims for treatment of psychological injuries sustained by civilian workers in Iraq and Afghanistan.And with no one to go to bat for them the insurance companies are having their way all too often. But the insurance companies say they are doing what they are supposed to do, like this.
Some seriously afflicted contract workers have been dumped into indigent medical care programs, according to court records. Many have had to wage lengthy legal battles to win payments for psychological treatment. At least four have committed suicide after returning home from Iraq, according to court records and interviews with attorneys and family members.
"Companies benefit, both from a financial perspective and a customer satisfaction perspective, to settle claims as quickly as possible," said Chris Winans, an AIG spokesman. "We are in the business of paying claims and in the business of making people's lives whole again."Or maybe hoping that he would do to himself what the Iraqis couldn't.
AIG fought Walker's claim for nearly a year and a half, despite a finding by one of its own experts that Walker needed psychological treatment — until July 2006, when a judge finally ruled in Walker's favor.
Walker said that he understood that working in Iraq could be risky, but that he never expected his toughest battles to take place after he returned home.
Insurance company officials "were fighting because they didn't want to pay," said Walker, 46, a Georgia resident. "Whatever they could do to keep it going as long as possible, they did. They were hoping that I would give up and let it go."
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