Bashir Ahmedzai was a surgeon from Kabul who landed a job working as an interpreter at a U.S. military hospital in 2004. After his foot was injured in a vehicle explosion in 2007, he fled to the U.S., where he eventually found work as ”housekeeper” at a military hospital in Texas.

“I speak six languages and I am a qualified general surgeon. But I couldn’t make enough money to support myself. I had to ask my family to send me money from Afghanistan to survive,” Ahmedzai said.

The system, which is regulated by the Labor Department under a law known as the Defense Base Act, requires defense contractors in war zones to purchase workers’ compensation insurance for their employees. Paid for by taxpayers as part of the contract price, the policies are designed to pay for medical care and wages lost to injuries.

In Yewazi’s case, however, his insurance company failed to provide him medical benefits to cover the cost of his health care. Instead, he was treated by U.S. military doctors at the scene and later at Bagram, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan.

via Lost in Limbo: Injured Afghan Translators Struggle to Survive – ProPublica.

U.S. taxpayers are paying the premiums for these insurance policies and the insurance companies are simply pocketing the premiums. Damned thieves.