An attorney says none of her military clients have yet been paid for Dept. of Defense malpractice claims despite a 2019 law change allowing them to seek compensation.
House committee in April“The failure of the military doctor’s gross negligence and failure to detect and treat my cancer when it was first noted on the CT scan done on me in January 2017 is the mistake that allowed the aggressive tumor to double in size and rob me and my family of my life,” Stayskal testified.
The Secretary of Defense and the secretaries of the Army, Air Force, and Navy either ignored or denied repeated requests for on-camera interviews from InvestigateTV. The Defense Department wouldn’t respond to questions about the claims process, delays, or transparency. The Navy and Marines did not respond to repeated requests. The Air Force said it has received 118 claims as of September, denying 27 of them and settling four. I
The military should be acting with far more transparency and processing claims quicker, the California Democrat told InvestigateTV.Defense Department rules created as part of the Stayskal Act did not allow for claims filed by service members injured by military doctors in the clinics, operating rooms, and ICUs aboard ships.aims to fix that and would make cases of alleged malpractice in those settings applicable for claims.
Attorney Khawam said that she has numerous clients waiting to hear from the military, including the Stuckey family and Richard Stayskal, the man the law was named after. This acknowledgement letter dated April 2020 was received by the Stuckey family, confirming their malpractice claim against the Defense Department