HOUSTON — Samuel Walker saw combat in Iraq firsthand: He was splattered with human flesh and shrapnel in a dining hall when a suicide bomber blew himself up just a few feet away.
When Walker got back to the U.S., he brought some of the battlefield home with him. He heard phantom screams in broad daylight, smelled gunpowder that wasn't there. A loud noise would send him into a defensive crouch. He'd been eating French fries in the mess hall at the time of the blast, and the sight of a McDonald's restaurant now brought back violent memories.
Two doctors diagnosed Walker with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, directly related to his close encounters with violence in Iraq.
But Walker was not a combat soldier. He was a civilian recreation supervisor for KBR, the largest contractor in Iraq. And instead of getting the medical and counseling help he sought, Walker, a U.S. Army veteran, found himself caught in a morass of red tape and rejected insurance claims.
A Times investigation of a taxpayer-financed insurance system, based on reviews of scores of cases, has found a pattern of repeatedly blocked claims for treatment of psychological injuries sustained by civilian workers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some seriously afflicted contract workers have been dumped into indigent medical care programs, according to court records. Many have had to wage lengthy legal battles to win payments for psychological treatment. At least four have committed suicide after returning home from Iraq, according to court records and interviews with attorneys and family members.
Although insurance companies have paid for counseling for many workers, they also have fought claims for psychological treatment more than for other types of injuries, according to data compiled by The Times from Department of Labor records.
Though contractors claiming psychological problems made up about 4% of nearly 1,400 serious reported injuries from 2003 to 2005, such workers accounted for 13% of the cases fought out in courtrooms.
In fighting claims, the insurance companies have relied on doctors with questionable expertise, according to court records and claimants' attorneys.
In one case, an insurance company psychiatrist who specialized in pharmacological research broadly dismissed psychology as "baloney." In another, a psychologist hired by insurance giant American International Group, or AIG, for his supposed expertise in PTSD had seen only 10 to 15 cases in a decade of practice.
