“It’s Not Just Walter Reed”
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Health Care, Military, WarThat’s the title of a new Wash Post article, and I can’t say that it’s surprising. Our nation’s VA hospitals have been neglected for years, and I have first hand experience since my grandfather has had to visit our local one here in Kansas City, MO several times over the past decade.
Sad to say, but it’s an old, dingy place that doesn’t appear to offer the very best medical care…which, by the way, is what our veterans deserve. And I’m talking about the absolute finest care you’d be able to find anywhere…better than the best private hospitals. And oddly enough, the past couple times my gramps has needed an operation he’s been transfered over to private hospitals so they can get they procedure done. The VA here simply doesn’t have the capabilities.
What’s worse is I’ve discovered that Bush is looking to cut funding from the VA’s budget so he can balance his own tax-break laden budget by 2012. Amazing.
Across the country, some military quarters for wounded outpatients are in bad shape, according to interviews, Government Accountability Office reports and transcripts of congressional testimony. The mold, mice and rot of Walter Reed’s Building 18 compose a familiar scenario for many soldiers back from Iraq or Afghanistan who were shipped to their home posts for treatment. Nearly 4,000 outpatients are currently in the military’s Medical Holding or Medical Holdover companies, which oversee the wounded. Soldiers and veterans report bureaucratic disarray similar to Walter Reed’s: indifferent, untrained staff; lost paperwork; medical appointments that drop from the computers; and long waits for consultations.Sandy Karen was horrified when her 21-year-old son was discharged from the Naval Medical Center in San Diego a few months ago and told to report to the outpatient barracks, only to find the room swarming with fruit flies, trash overflowing and a syringe on the table. “The staff sergeant says, ‘Here are your linens’ to my son, who can’t even stand up,” said Karen, of Brookeville, Md. “This kid has an open wound, and I’m going to put him in a room with fruit flies?” She took her son to a hotel instead.
“My concern is for the others, who don’t have a parent or someone to fight for them,” Karen said. “These are just kids. Who would have ever looked in on my son?”
Here’s the long and short of it. You can’t ask our men and women to risk their lives for our freedom, and then cut funding from the facilities which provide the only way those same men and women can regain some of their emotional and/or physical freedom from the injuries they’ve recieved trying to secure our freedom. And if you do ask that, you’re not only heartless, you also don’t care about those people because your actions don’t match your rhetoric.
I hope Bush takes notice of this glaring disconnect between what he’s saying and what he’s doing, but somehow…
This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 and is filed under Health Care, Military, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 5th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Universal HealthCare Now!
March 5th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
On an earlier thread, I was quick to point out that the military & veteran’s hospital systems are separate entities, which they are. I did not realize at the time both are under the umbrella of the Dept of Wets Affairs. I had also mentioned the recent study that said the VA hospital system was the best in the country. Evidently they were wrong.
I don’t know what the answer is, but it isn’t what we are now doing.
March 5th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Bush’s 2008 budget for VA is $87 billion — $40 billion higher than thee 2001 budget by Bill Clinton. That’s some “cut”
March 5th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Don’t get in the way with your silly numbers Don. Bush is a bastard and that is all you really need to know.
March 5th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Don, read what I said and what the story says. Bush is set to cut the VA budget, and these hospitals are already ailing. Does that make any sense? How about updating and expanding these facilities?
People, it’s WAR TIME. We have thousands of men and women coming back over with limbs blown off, neurological damage, etc. Bush shouldn’t be trying to balance the budget by cutting and then freezing the VA’s budget. It’s nonsensical and I hope it doesn’t happen.
March 5th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
[...] New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Gavel, On Deadline, The Volokh Conspiracy, The Mahablog, Donklephant, The Carpetbagger Report, Pacific Views, The Sideshow, Shakespeare’s Sister, Don Surber, Michelle Malkin, Once Upon a Time, Middle Earth Journal, The Heretik, Brilliant at Breakfast, NO QUARTER, Obsidian Wings, TPMmuckraker, Matthew Yglesias, Outside The Beltway, Liberal Values, Reason Magazine, News Desk Blog, COUNTERCOLUMN, Sister Toldjah, The Impolitic, PoliBlog (TM), DownWithTyranny!, TalkLeft, Rising Hegemon, Crooks and Liars, All Spin Zone, Frameshop, Think Progress and CorrenteWire and Many others [...]
March 5th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
[...] Other Bloggers Are Weighing In (Courtesy of the MemeOrandum roundup): The Washington Monthly; The Huffington Post; Donklephant; The Carpetbagger Report; Don Surber (interesting point of view from the right); Crooks and Liars; Liberal Values; Poliblog (a fellow Alabama blogger) Technorati Tags: Army, Bush, Corporatism, Current Events, Daniel Akaka, Democrats, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Weightman, GOP, Headline News, Headlines, Henry Waxman, John Tierney, Kevin Kiley, Military, Neoconservatism, News, News and Politics, Oligarchy, Politics, Rants, Republicans, Walter Reed [...]
March 6th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Don – Your basic Chevy Cavalier was 11K in 2001 and sells for 21K today …. indicating a bent toward apples and oranges.
On the topic of VA hospitals there never was a rhyme or reason to facilities maintenance or even location.
1969 – Lackland Air force base, then a transition hospital for amputees was next door to the foriegn language school, allowing the suffering vets to continuously see Vietnamese (even though they were South Vietnamese) and that caused a lot of un-needed, additional emotional stress and angst for folks who were in a state of …. what now?