Contractors Using Military Clinics in Iraq and Afghanistan and not paying!

Contractors Using Military Clinics
Civilians Also Are Not Paying, Audit Says
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 7, 2009

Military clinics and field hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan have supplied more than $1 million a month in health-care services to civilian contractors during the past two years without seeking reimbursement from their employers, as provided by law, according to a new audit by the Defense Department inspector general.

The report, issued Monday, noted that all costs associated with both emergency and primary medical care are reimbursable to the government and are the responsibility of the contingency contractor personnel, their employer or their health insurance provider.

Yet the study found that Army, Navy and Air Force clinics and hospitals were not billing contractors because there was no unified system for doing so. Moreover, more than half the contracts were vague about who pays for the medical treatment of employees, although the law is clear on this point, the IG found.

Investigators cited cases in which contractors were hospitalized with heart problems, pneumonia, an accidental self-inflicted gun shot or injuries from a blast, but the medical facilities did not bill the patients' employers for $141,340 for their stays. At the time, the military did have rates of $2,041 a day for nonmilitary inpatients and $195 per visit for outpatients.


Two contractors, Blackwater Worldwide, now known as Xe, and KBR, operated medical facilities for their own personnel and for other nonmilitary people. The cost of those facilities was included in their overall contracts, but the IG investigators said the contractors did not break out what they were charging the Army overall for the medical treatment they were providing.

The IG found that military medical units had incomplete or inaccurate records. For example, in a sampling of about 200 records, 13 percent incorrectly identified patients as contractors, 22 percent had duplicate entries, and 25 percent showed discrepancies between computer and paper records.
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Contractors Using Military Clinics