Also... There is still a stupid loophole in the law that means if a person dies on active duty but while medically inactive, benefits and survivor benefits are reduced. If they think a military member even MIGHT die during treatment, a smart commander will immediately process the paperwork to get them medically retired before they die to ensure that benefits are maximized. It's a stupid loophole in the law that our dysfunctional congress has known about for decades but refuses to fix, so commanders have to take extreme measures to ensure their people and families are taken care of properly.
As this guy was a cadet, what probably happened is they reverted him to his equivalent enlisted rank (probably E-3), retired him, then started up the survivor benefit annuity. That means his beneficiaries will get a percentage of his "Retired pay" if he dies. His retired pay is probably more than he was making as a cadet, and the retired status means he and any dependents he might end up with will continue to get pretty good medical benefits. If he gets better, he could possibly come back to a duty status and then everyone wins. If not, for life he gets the treatment he earned through his initial decision to enter the service. Again, win.
I know a kid who was in the Army in a similar situation... The Army was under pressure to cut costs so BEFORE the medical situation was stable his commander kicked him out of the service (he was in an IED blast in Iraq) and he spent the next 3 years with no benefits fighting the VA for a disability judgement (he was 100% disabled with severe neurological damage). Big difference between the services back then, but I think the Army is taking better care of it's disabled vets nowadays after getting a huge amount of bad PR for many cases of systematically mis-treating disabled vets.
