He's in the Army now! Wife's cancer prompts man to enlist!

[golddigger]

He's in the Army now

Wife's cancer prompts man to enlist
By Mark Johnson of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Oct. 18, 2009

56 days...55 days...54 days...

Chelsea Caudle began sining her text messages this summer with a countdown. At 14 years old, she knew no better way to express what was coming. Day zero was to be Oct. 7, the day dad left for Army basic training in Fort Jackson, S.C. He was moving 950 miles from their home in Watertown,950 miles from mom.

He was leaving, even though Mom was sick with ovarian cancer. Even though he had been at her side through two long, miserable rounds of chemotherapy. Even though she now faced the likelihood of a third.

In fact, Dad was leaving because mom was sick.

In March, he was laid off from his job as a raw materials coordinator for a plastics company called PolyOne, where he'd worked for 20 years. His severance package had provided several month's salary, but by August the paychecks were winding down. Soon the cost of his family health care coverage was going to triple, then a few months after that, nearly triple again. They needed coverage so Mom could fight her cancer.

Dad's solution: a four-year hitch in the Army.

More at link

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/64677772.html

[Bozita]

1. I just gave the OP a Rec. It shows zero.

[TheCoxwain]

3. Unfortunately - DU is not a Idiot free zone

[Captain Hilts]

2. The Guard advertises family healthcare as a reason for joining. An economic draft.

Just as all those teenagers with pregnant girlfriends sign up.

[ipaint]

4. Mission Accomplished.

MILITARY MEETS RECRUITING GOALS
Posted: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 5:42 PM by firstread
from NBC's Courtney Kube
For the first time since the end of the draft more than 25 years ago, the U.S. military met its yearly recruiting and retention goals, as well as their overall quality goals. All four services met or exceeded their recruiting goals for Fiscal Year 09.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/10/13/2097811.aspx



And we think we are going to get healthcare reform. Right.

[madamesilverspurs]

5. My brother had to go back into the service

when he lost his management level job due to pressure from Aetna; the insurance carrier didn't want to cover my nephew who had just been diagnosed with cerebral palsy. The military was the only 'employer' whose coverage didn't balk at taking care of the toddler.

---

[alsame]

6. This is so heartbreaking. I hope they both survive their ordeals. nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. And this is your ECONOMIC draft... for all of you screaming there is no draft

:hi:

got it now?

[SammyWinstonJack]

13. +1 nt

[ecstatic]

16. I don't agree. It's still voluntary nt

[wolfgangmo]

31. Puhlease.

What choices does he have?

Watching his wife die because they have no insurance?
Selling everything including his house/possesioins/etc and putting his family on the street to afford treatment for his wife?
Robbing a bank?

Sure its a choice much like the choice you would have if a nut was holding a gun to your head and telling you to swallow his cock or swallow a bullet. Some choice.

Don't you get it or are you just arguing an absolute for the hell of it?

[ecstatic]

35. It may be too late, but he could have applied for medicaid

[nadinbrzezinski]

41. Only AFTER you lose all

what part of ECONOMIC draft are you still purposely missing?

[dixiegrrrrl]

46. Excellent point and bears repeating twice a day at least.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. What a bum. Just joining to get some of that socialized medicine.

What these lazy schmucks won't do.

Next thing you know, he'll be applying for food stamps.

[tanyev]

9. I guess he's fortunate that he's still young enough and fit enough to get in,

but it's terrible that this is one of their only options.

[orbitalman]

10. Yes...

Because her ONLY OTHER option would be to "die quickly."

[Solly Mack]

11. K&R

:(

[BAPhill]

12. Desperate times = desperate measures

What happens to that family when he is deployed to Afghanistan?

[SammyWinstonJack]

15. And when/if he dies in Afghanistan?

[wroberts189]

25. Army has good life insurance... nt

[ecstatic]

14. Good luck to him and his family

He did what he had to under the current circumstances. He should have chose the Air Force though. I hope the Army sticks to whatever promises they made.

[TwilightGardener]

17. He's been working for 20 years somewhere? He must be middle aged--

I didn't know you could join up being that old. It will be tough for him to meet fitness standards, unless he's in better shape than most middle aged men.

[SammyWinstonJack]

19. My son recently re-joined the Army. He's 37. In his unit, there is a 55 y/o man.

A few others are in their forties.

[TwilightGardener]

20. Usually guys that age have some rank and are ready to retire.

My husband joined up at 22 and felt "old" compared to the 18 year olds in basic training. But then there were some guys older than him--they got razzed a lot. Now he's approaching the big 4-0, and even though he's in great shape (except for bad knees), he finds it harder and harder to keep the same scores on his fitness tests, and the young kids are starting to whip his ass in squadron fitness events. We have a good laugh about it, but seriously, it can't be fun or good for your joints to join up in your 30's or 40's. Hope your son has a good experience.

[Obamanaut]

23. Article lists age as 40. nt

[Orsino]

18. Sign on the dotted line, or we will let your family die. n/t

[Brickbat]

21. I know several people who have done this, who joined up around 2005-06 to get the health care.

One of them, a dear friend, is on his second tour in Iraq.

[Echo In Light]

22. The journal indicates he was interested in enlisting prior to, which likely says a great deal

... cause frankly, I know many un-insured people, and none of them would even consider enlisting in the War Machine just to get HC ins.

[wolfgangmo]

32. He is not enlisting to get insurance for himself but for his wife.

The mother of his children.

Poverty IS slavery.

[BlueGirlRedState]

24. This story is tragic on so many levels

Mostly, I feel for the kids in this family. Ovarian cancer is a horrible way to die and it looks like the mom will die from it no matter what. My best friend died of it two years ago. And their father will be in the military. They are left to cope with the mother's last days alone.

I cried when I read this yesterday. No one is benefitting from this.

[L0oniX]

26. What makes him think he will make enough blood money to pay for treatment?

[TwilightGardener]

27. He and his family will be covered by Tricare.

[Obamanaut]

29. It is possible to make ends meet in the military. Here are links to

a couple of charts that might surprise you, considering that a couple of days ago folks here were saying that $40k income is not all that bad.

http://www.defenselink.mil/militarypay/mpcalcs/Calculators/RMC.aspx this link has a calculator to enter years of service, pay grade, family size, etc. E2 with 1 year and family of four shows nearly $40,000 annual income.

This link is to the basic pay tables. Housing allowance is a different page, as are the other allowances such as time spent at sea, flight pay, etc. In the beginning, basic pay isn’t a whole lot as compared to the private sector generally - but the other stuff adds up rather quickly.

edited to add - and recall that his and his family medical care is covered, either at a military hospital or locally via the Tricare network.

[WonderGrunion]

30. What a horrible thing to say.

Feel free to attack military leaders or politicians starting bad wars, but it is a special kind of low to attack a person providing for their family as doing it for "blood money".

Have you no shame?

[L0oniX]

51. War monger. You think everyone has to love the fucking military?

What ...I have no freedom to hate the fucking military? As far as this person goes ...I hate the fact that we don't care enough about our fellow citizens to have single payer health care but fuck the military and I stand against all those that enter in it except in the event of an actual attack on this country by another country ...not a band of criminals or over some fucked up policy. Patriotism is for fools.

Never was a patriot yet, but was a fool.

– John Dryden

A patriot is a fool in ev’ry age.

– Alexander Pope.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

– Samuel Johnson

In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary, patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first.

– Ambrose Bierce

Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen.

– Ambrose Bierce

That pernicious sentiment, “Our country, right or wrong.”

– James Russell Lowell

“My country right or wrong” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother drunk or sober.”

– G. K. Chesterton

Patriotism which has the quality of intoxication is a danger not only to its native land but to the world, and “My country never wrong” is an even more dangerous maxim than “My country, right or wrong.”

– Bertrand Russell

Patrioism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

– George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

– George Bernard Shaw

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

– George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

– George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

– Denis Diderot

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.

– George Santayana

The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations.

– H.G. Wells

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. “Patriotism” is its cult. . . . Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.

– Erich Fromm

One of the great attractions of patriotism–it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat, Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.

– Aldous Huxley

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and “patriotism” . . . Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots.

– Gordon Allport

It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.

– Elbert Hubband

Patriotism varies, from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy.

– William Inge

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Patriotism is the passion of fools and the most foolish of passions.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Patriotism corrupts history.

– Goethe

Into the cultural and technological system of the modern world, the patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings. Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, and retardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modern mankind.

– Thorstein Veblen

The standardization of mass-production carries with it a tendency to standardize a mass-mind, producing a willing conformity, not merely to common ways of living, but to common ways of thinking and common valuations. The worst defect of patriotism is its tendency to foster and impose this common mind, and so to stifle the innumerable germs of liberty.

– J.A. Hobson

2. Patriotism and War:

At the bottom of all patriotism is war: that is why I am no patriot.

– Jules Renard

No other factor in history, not even religion, has produced so many wars as has the clash of national egotisms sanctified by the name of patriotism.

– Preserved Smith

Naturally the common people don’t want war . . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism.

– Hermann Goering.

That worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor . . . This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism–how passionately I hate them!

– Albert Einstein

3. Patriotism and Religion:

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

– Guy de Maupassant

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.

– Luis Buñuel

To be patriotic, hate all nations but you own; to be religious, all sects but your own; to be moral, all pretenses but your own.

– Lionel Strachey

When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion; but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism!

– David Starr Jordan

4. The American Syndrome:

If you have a weak candidate and a weak platform, wrap yourself up in the American flag and talk about the Constitution.

– Matt Quay

How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be “American” before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries? It is really too easy a disguise for our shortcomings to dress them up as a form of patriotism.

– Edith Wharton

The 100 percent American is 99 percent an idiot.

– George Bernard Shaw

Treason is in the air around us everywhere. It goes by the name of patriotism.

– Thomas Corwin

5. Three relatively positive assessments of patriotism:

A patriot is somebody who protects his country from his government. Or better yet: who has the guts to protect his country from its government.

– Piotyr Dirk

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

– George Washington

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

– Thomas Jefferson

[WonderGrunion]

52. Yay! You can google quotes about patriotism.

When someone has nothing of value to say, they quote someone else.
- Me.

[nadinbrzezinski]

42. The military medical system is pretty good

and open to civilians, as in DEPENDENTS...

So the medical care is now covered.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

28. while he made a very pragmatic decision, it sucks that he had too

really really miserable choice

[winyanstaz]

33. The news gets worse.....

If dad dies while in the military...the widow will have to pay the first $150.00 of every single visit and treatment herself.
That will be hard as her pension will be next to nothing.
If he had lived long enough to have served for 20 years, she would get around $880.00 a month to live on..and to pay her deductibles out of.
This essentially cuts widows and orphans of the military OUT of health care.
I almost forgot to mention.
The government will also take any social security payments she might have been eligible for away..because you can only have ONE payment from the government if you are military.

[Obamanaut]

43. Is the last sentence in your post completely true? I'm pretty sure

one can receive military retirement as well as social security (John McCain and I do.) I don't know about widow pension after the retiree dies.

As for the money the widow gets if the retired member dies, when I retired in 1988, I was given the option of enrolling in the program that would guarantee my widow a portion of my pension, but I had to forfeit a large chunk of that pension to go toward the plan whilst I was still alive. As it turned out, I've lived long enough since retirement that there is enough that Miz O can live comfortably just on soc sec if I expire first.

[winyanstaz]

44. That is what I was told after my husband died..

I only get the military one.
Maybe you have to be an officers widow or something..I dont know.

[dembotoz]

34. makes you proud doesn't it.

[ILMediaProgressives]

36. Ah, the 'uniquely American solution'

to health care.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsIcS7egnyw

[DesertDiamond]

37. I realized years ago that this is why the RW is trying to destroy education and the economy...

to force us to join the armed forces and defend the rights of corporations to take over the resources of other countries. My nephew joined the Army last year because of lack of any other options. On top of that, he just signed up to go to Iraq in two weeks because without combat pay he's on starvation wages.

[Cid_B]

38. Lets rewrite this article shall we?

A man who worked for a plastics company was laid off last year. His wife also has cancer. After a fruitless search for a job who's benefits would extend to his ailing wife he finally found a job with the US government.

While the job requires extensive travel the benefits will cover his wife and his entire family even with her pre-existing condition.

________________________________________________________-

See how much nicer that sounds? What? Just because hes serving in the military its a terrible thing? He is providing for his family and caring for his wife in particular. Good on him.

Sounds like the type that doesn't want anyone's pity and found a solution in a desperate time so good on him.

[gratuitous]

45. Let's not leave out the best part

"While the job requires extensive travel and the very real possibility of being killed or doing some killing of another human being,, the benefits will cover his wife and his entire family unless he gets killed, even with her pre-existing condition. If and when he comes home, he may have a whole spectrum of conditions that will require professional treatment."

See how much more realistic that sounds? What? Just because he's going into the military it's not all rainbows and wiggly puppy dogs? He's being forced into a dangerous situation because our society values violence more than it values its citizens. Shame on us.

[dixiegrrrrl]

47. Bingo.

:applause: :applause:

[Cid_B]

48. What's your point?

Tough to find a job anywhere with no down side. You know of anything that is "rainbows and wiggly puppy dogs?"

Its his choice and he made it. Good for him. He doesn't need your pity.

[Capt. America]

39. If military service is truly revered in this country, then the only fair solution is a draft.

Unless the suburb kids are pulled from high school to join up, we will have perpetual war fought by the poor and hired mercenaries (i.e. Halliburton).

[Cid_B]

49. As a note...

I am neither poor nor a contractor.

Put your broad brush away.

[Capt. America]

50. I'm not using a broad brush, I am using a generality based on facts. It is a tool used in

argumentation in order to advance the discussion as a whole, so as not to be mired in discreet, particular exceptions in induvidual instances. I'll show you how it works:

1) Health care costs in America are rising at an exponential rate.
2) The rising health care costs are forcing many Americans to pay premiums that are so high, they cannot afford other necessities like food or rent.
3) We need reasoned health care reform to lower costs for the average American.
4) "What are you talking about? Health care is fine in America. In fact, my health care premiums actually went down $10 a week this year ".

See how it works?

[Dulcinea]

40. You gotta do what you gotta do.

What would YOU do if you were in his situation?