The Walter Reed Pattern
In today's Washington Post, we learn the story of Army Spec. Roberto Reyes Jr., who "lies nearly immobile and unable to talk" in his hospital bed. "Once a strapping member of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry, Reyes got too close to an improvised explosive device in Iraq." His mother and his aunt are "constant bedside companions; Reyes, 25, likes for them to get two inches from his face, so he can pull on their noses with the few fingers he can still control." But his family complains about his medical care. "They fight over who's going to have to give him a bath -- in front of him!" his aunt said. "Reyes suffered third-degree burns on his leg when a nurse left him in a shower unattended. He was unable to move himself away from the scalding water." Perhaps surprisingly, these horror stories are not from Walter Reed hospital, but the VA Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y. They are evidence not of a few tragic isolated problems, but of systemic neglect that has nearly crippled the U.S. veterans' health system. "I've...written the same story from Fort Stewart, Georgia. I've written the same story at Fort Knox," says journalist Mark Benjamin, who first reported on the neglect and deplorable conditions at Walter Reed two years ago. Likewise, the problems that led to this crisis are also systemic. "For all its cries of 'support the troops,'" columnist Paul Krugman writes today, "the Bush administration has treated veterans’ medical care the same way it treats everything else: nickel-and-diming the needy, protecting the incompetent and privatizing everything it can."
THE FUNDING: Asked on Friday to name one question she would like to ask senior Pentagon officials, Washington Post reporter Dana Priest (whose four-month investigation helped expose this story) said, "The root of so much that we cover is money. And the question is, why isn't this funded to the extent that it needs to be funded?" Indeed, money is at the root of the problems exposed at Walter Reed. Though the administration "uses carefully cooked numbers to pretend that it has been generous to veterans," Bush's budget tells the real story. Despite a dramatic increase in demand on the Veterans Administration (VA) from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, federal spending on veterans' medical care since 2001 has "actually lagged behind overall national health spending." Veterans are now charged for formerly free services, including hundreds of dollars each month for food, so the VA can save money. The VA has a backlog of 400,000 benefit claims, including many concerning mental health. More important, two months before the invasion of Iraq, the Veterans Health Administration, "which previously offered care to all veterans, introduced severe new restrictions on who is entitled to enroll in its health care system." Even as the wars rage on, Bush's budget this year assumes consecutive cutbacks to veterans' health care in 2009 and 2010 and a freeze thereafter. Nevertheless, in 2005, David Chu, the Pentagon's undersecretary for personnel and readiness, told the Wall Street Journal that veterans' health costs had "gotten to the point where they are hurtful [to] the nation's ability to defend itself."
THE INCOMPETENCE: The scandal of Walter Reed is also one of failed leadership, and the resignations last week of Army Secretary Francis Harvey and hospital chief Maj. Gen. George Weightman have not ended "concerns that the military leadership had forgotten the basic mission of taking care of the troops." Other senior officials must be held accountable. Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, who oversaw Walter Reed until 2004, remains surgeon general of the Army, the top medical official, despite reports that Kiley has known for years about the neglect and deplorable conditions at Walter Reed. Kiley was personally told about injured veterans who were “languishing and lost on the grounds,” sharing drugs and “drinking themselves to death,” and reportedly did nothing to address the problems. (He was quoted yesterday calling the Washington Post's Walter Reed investigation "yellow journalism at its worst"). In one stunning case, Kiley took no action when personally informed by the wife of Rep. Bill Young (R-FL) that a soldier was sleeping in his own urine. Another official that must come under the microscope is VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, who is "accused by some veterans and the organizations that represent them of being primarily a mouthpiece for the Bush administration and of being slow to respond to increasing strains on his agency." Nicholson entered the position with far more experience in politics than in veterans policy. He served as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1997 to 2000, "raising close to $380 million for the 2000 cycle." In Bush's first term, Nicholson was rewarded with the plush ambassadorship to the Vatican; after being selected to run the VA, he promptly ranked #4 in The New Republic's list of "the 15 biggest Bush administration hacks."
THE PRIVATIZATION: On Friday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee headed by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) released an internal memo from Sept. 2006 describing how the Army's decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed was causing an exodus of "highly skilled and experienced personnel," placing the entire hospital and its patient care services "at risk of mission failure." In Jan. 2006, against the wishes of numerous progressive members of Congress, Walter Reed finalized a five-year, $120-million "cost-plus" contract to IAP Worldwide Services for hospital support services, including facilities management. IAP is led by Al Neffgen, a former senior Halliburton official who testified in 2004 "in defense of Halliburton's exorbitant charges for fuel delivery and troop support in Iraq," and former Vice President Dan Quayle serves on the board. IAP has "grown exponentially in recent years in part because of contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq"; in 2005, it received a contract to deliver desperately-needed ice to victims of Hurricane Katrina, but "millions of pounds of ice were sent to storage, some as far away as Maine." As Waxman writes, "It would be reprehensible if the deplorable conditions were caused or aggravated by an ideological commitment to privatize government services regardless of the costs to taxpayers and the consequences for wounded soldiers."
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