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FALLOUT FROM THE WALTER REED SCANDAL --
Editorials abound and the White House
has ordered an investigation.
The sad part of this story is that the
GIs at Walter Reed have now learned NOT to trust any government agency.
That will make their transition to the VA just that much more difficult
for them.
Background on the Walter Reed story with
backlinks here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/07/nf07/nfFEB07/nf022107-6.htm
We have three stories...the first two are
editorials and then a story about the White House investigation.
First story here...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/article/2007/
02/20/AR2007022001490.html
Story below:
---------------
Rotten Homecoming
This is no way to treat a veteran.
IF YOU LISTEN to the PR operation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center,
the U.S. military's gleaming flagship hospital offers veterans the best
treatment available. What doesn't get mentioned is the bureaucratic
contempt and physical squalor that too often await badly injured
outpatient soldiers on the Walter Reed campus, the subject of a
four-month Post investigation detailed in articles published Sunday and
Monday.
Reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull and researcher Julie Tate spent
hundreds of hours inspecting conditions and interviewing injured troops
and their loved ones at the Walter Reed outpatient facilities. Their
findings: Veterans' rooms are rank; bureaucratic hassles and
paper-pushing make the process of repairing buildings, redressing
patient grievances and providing veterans with basic goods depressingly
inept; administrators' neglect of patients' mental and physical health
borders on the criminal; and, most distressing, many veterans leave
Walter Reed without the compensation they clearly deserve for their
sacrifices.
The walls of one soldier's room were covered with black mold, and the
ceiling of his shower had a large hole. Soldiers who lost their uniforms
while undergoing emergency treatment on the battlefield have had to
present their purple hearts to get replacement clothes. Amputees and
patients on taxing drug regimens are required to report for formation
early in the morning, even if it means trudging over accumulated ice and
snow. Lost paperwork, which in one case resulted in an obviously
impaired veteran getting an order to report to Germany, is a constant
problem, sometimes forcing soldiers and their relatives to live at
Walter Reed for 18 months or longer as their cases are processed.
Most infuriating are reports of official efforts to deny disability
benefits to discharged fighters. The Army tried to deny disability
compensation to Cpl. Dell McLeod, who suffered a head injury that left
him aimless and unable even to count change at the cafeteria. Army
officials' argument: Because he had done poorly in high school, his
current mental state might not have been caused by the steel door that
smashed his skull in Iraq. If the Army determined that he was mentally
fit to serve in the first place, it cannot now abscond from its
responsibility for the consequences of his service overseas. Cpl. McLeod
ended up getting a settlement from the command at Walter Reed -- despite
base staffers' best efforts -- only after his wife got a congressional
staffer involved.
Walter Reed's commander, Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, says that
conditions on the post will improve rapidly. His response is
commendable, and it should not be forgotten that thousands of
professionals and volunteers, civilian and military, are working hard to
help veterans heal and adjust. But it also should not have taken
newspaper articles to bring change to outpatient conditions at Walter
Reed. And while filthy conditions at Building 18 are a temporary problem
for these veterans, lowball settlements may leave soldiers and their
families impoverished for life.
---------------
Second story here...
http://www.cmonitor.com/apps/
pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070221/REP
OSITORY/702210314/1027/OPINION01
Story below:
---------------
Editorial
Debt to America's troops isn't being paid
Monitor staff
The Bush administration is failing to give many of the 50,000 soldiers
hurt in combat, injured in accidents or ill from service in Iraq and
Afghanistan the care they need and deserve. It began as a failure of
foresight that, but because it has been inadequately remedied, it has
become a moral failure.
Sunday and yesterday, the Monitor published a poignant Washington Post
account of the delays in care and denials of benefits experienced by
soldiers seeking help from the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center. Many
lost limbs. Others lost full use of their minds. More than a third of
the 200,000 veterans treated by the VA have been diagnosed with
war-related mental health problems.
Because the occupying forces in Iraq were too small and too poorly
equipped, there were more injuries and deaths than necessary. Both
problems remain. Fully-armored vehicles are still in short supply. That
guarantees shredded soldiers.
As in every war, some soldiers no doubt exaggerate or falsify injury
claims. The Veterans Administration should make every effort to make
sure that compensation is deserved. But with its budget battered by a
demand for services three times higher than it planned for, the agency
at times acts like an insurance company in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina.
The VA has been accused of low-balling the extent of disabilities or
denying that injuries were service-related and refusing compensation.
The Post cited one 47-year-old Walter Reed patient with an improperly
healed foot broken in a crash. He was denied disability status because
his problem was ostensibly cause by "late-life atrophy" and not the
injury he suffered in Iraq.
Another veteran was denied compensation on the grounds that his
incapacitating mental problems were caused not by post-traumatic stress
but by a bipolar disorder that presumably would have manifested itself
anyway.
Slow payments remain a chronic problem. Perhaps because the VA, too,
believed that the Iraqis would greet America's soldiers with kisses and
flowers, it was unprepared for the massive demand for its services.
Processing claims can take many months, and the backlog has grown to
400,000. Two years can pass before a disabled veteran receives his or
her first check, forcing families to struggle financially.
Because recruits are getting harder to come by, the Army has raised its
recruitment age, first to 35, then 42. Older soldiers mean more veterans
with health problems.
Congress has begun paying attention to the plight of returning soldiers,
and it's moving to prop up the VA's budget. Over the long haul, a cane
might not do the trick. Earlier this year, a Harvard University public
finance professor estimated that the lifetime health care costs of
veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone could be between $300
billion and $600 billion.
The Bush administration, however, is taking the wrong approach to
defraying that cost. The president's budget, for example, calls for
charging veterans $250 per year to access government health care. It
doubles their co-payment for prescription drugs and reduces the number
of beds in veterans' nursing homes. It allots too little for adequate
health care now, let alone enough to meet the needs of veterans of past
wars and those who will return from their deployments in coming years.
On the stump, presidents and politicians are happy to sing the praises
of soldiers and thank them for their sacrifices. But the real test of
how a nation treats those who defend it lies in the care veterans
receive when they are in need.
---------------
Third story here...
http://www.latimes.com/news/
nationworld/nation/la-na-walterreed21feb21,1
,4912090.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=1&cset=true
Story below:
---------------
White House orders review of military hospitals
From Reuters
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration ordered a review Tuesday of the
care of wounded U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan after
reports that many face neglect in the Army's medical system.
Democrats controlling Congress demanded a thorough investigation and
promised legislation after a Washington Post series exposed
deteriorating conditions for hundreds of outpatients at Walter Reed Army
Medical Center in Washington, the premier U.S. military hospital.
The controversy poses a public relations problem for President Bush, who
has spoken often of America's debt to military personnel wounded in the
wars, visited the hospital's wards and honored military amputees at
White House functions.
The White House expressed concern at conditions for veterans after
reports that many suffering physical and psychological problems lived in
shoddy housing on or near the sprawling complex and faced long battles
with Army bureaucracy.
"I can tell you that we believe that they deserve better," White House
spokesman Tony Snow told reporters. "Of course there's outrage that men
and women who have been fighting have not received the outpatient care."
"We need to make sure that whatever problems there are get fixed," he
added.
The Pentagon said an independent panel would look into outpatient care
and administrative processes at Walter Reed and the National Naval
Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
"We are committed to improving the clinical and administrative
processes, including improving temporary living conditions for our
service members and their families," said Assistant Secretary of Defense
William Winkenwerder Jr., the Pentagon's top doctor.
The Army and Navy had also begun their own reviews into the two medical
centers, the Pentagon said in a statement.
---------------
Larry Scott --
