The bill's the problem, not the money

Sending a wounded soldier a bill to compensate for the food he or she ate while hospitalized is a cold and ungrateful thing for the U.S. military to do.

We're glad to see Sen. Harry Reid and a Florida representative introducing legislation to do something about it. Unfortunately, they're not solving the bigger problem.

The bills, like the one sent to a Lyon County Marine reservist, Bill Murwin, are for reimbursement of the $8.10 military personnel receive per day for food. If they're in the hospital, they are eating hospital food. Thus, the military reasons, they don't need the $8.10 for food.

(While we're at it, let us comment that $8.10 is a pitiful amount of money for food. But it's enough to pay for their rations.)

It makes sense to us that the military doesn't pay for food its troops don't need. But service members in the field are fed, so they'd don't need the $8.10 either. The military doesn't worry about getting reimbursed for those meals.

The galling part for troops who end up in the hospital isn't necessarily the $8.10 a day. It's they fact they get a bill for the lump sum after they're released.

In Murwin's case, it was $210. "It's like having to pay for getting blown up," says Murwin, a Lyon County sheriff's deputy whose foot was injured when a grenade exploded.

As he points out, a serious injury to an enlisted man or woman could result in a sizable bill for somebody who doesn't make a lot of money in the first place. It's an unneccesary slap in the face.

The problem, as we see it, is a military bureacracy unable to account for its employees who are in the hospital. Isn't the solution to simply not pay them the $8.10 per diem? Why pay them, then bill them for reimbursement?

And then there's the part that really galled Murwin -- the military sicced a collection agency after him within days of sending the bill.

We don't begrudge service members the $8.10 a day. Most of them don't make enough money anyway.

It's the inefficiency in the massive military bureaucracy that makes us wonder just how much tax money was spent to collect $210 from Staff Sgt. Murwin.