We’ve looked through the fine print. We haven’t found anything about reclaiming money from a medical discharge. There’s no legal basis here. The moral of this post is not to make claims like “READ THE FINE PRINT” if you haven’t read the fine print. I’ve seen the paperwork. You haven’t. Don’t claim you understand this.
What’s the moral? Don’t enlist in the military if there’s a possibility that you might develop an unforeseeable illness? How could we have avoided this? Lots of people sign on to the military because they don’t have money. That’s the entire appeal of these ROTC programs.
If a soldier’s foot is blown off on his first day a of duty, he’s not asked to pay back all the money that the military spent on training him, now wasted. Why is this any different? There was no choice to become sick. There was no malicious intent. There was an unfortunate diagnosis at an inconvenient time. When I say inconvenient, I don’t mean that it’s inconvenient to the government. I mean that it’s inconvenient to us. We’d much rather she served her time as she’d planned than go through this mess. We’d much rather have her spend her four year in the service than owe an amount so massive that we’ll be paying it back long past our retirement.
If everything you say is true, the Navy is in the wrong big-time. Are you getting any help from your congressman?