For two weeks, revelations about U.S. war veterans, recuperating at [tag]Walter Reed[/tag] Army Medical Center, living in deplorable conditions and being ignored by a callous bureaucracy, have shocked Americans, cost some Pentagon officials their jobs, and generated a significant scandal. But we continue to learn more and more all the time.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on ABC yesterday, “If it’s this bad at the outpatient facilities at Walter Reed, how is it in the rest of the country? Walter Reed is our crown jewel.” As it turns out, Walter Reed is just the tip of the iceberg.
Ray Oliva went into the spare bedroom in his home in Kelseyville, Calif., to wrestle with his feelings. He didn’t know a single soldier at Walter Reed, but he felt he knew them all. He worried about the wounded who were entering the world of military health care, which he knew all too well. His own VA hospital in Livermore was a mess. The gown he wore was torn. The wheelchairs were old and broken.
“It is just not Walter Reed,” Oliva slowly tapped out on his keyboard at 4:23 in the afternoon on Friday. “The VA hospitals are not good either except for the staff who work so hard. It brings tears to my eyes when I see my brothers and sisters having to deal with these conditions. I am 70 years old, some say older than dirt but when I am with my brothers and sisters we become one and are made whole again.”
Oliva is but one quaking voice in a vast outpouring of accounts filled with emotion and anger about the mistreatment of wounded outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Stories of neglect and substandard care have flooded in from soldiers, their family members, veterans, doctors and nurses working inside the system. They describe depressing living conditions for outpatients at other military bases around the country, from Fort Lewis in Washington state to Fort Dix in New Jersey. They tell stories — their own versions, not verified — of callous responses to combat stress and a system ill equipped to handle another generation of psychologically scarred vets.
It just keeps getting worse. The WaPo article highlights an outpatient facility in San Diego where veterans with open wounds were sent to rooms filled with insects and overflowing trash. Another in Kentucky had mold in rooms, and no available nurses. Another Kentucky facility warned visitors about asbestos in recovering troops’ barracks. In a New York outpatient center, a veteran suffered third-degree burns on his leg when a nurse left him in a shower unattended — and he was physically unable to move himself away from the scalding water.
[tag]Paul Krugman[/tag] raises a point today that probably hasn’t been emphasized enough: that the Bush administration’s problems in caring for recovering troops are symptomatic of an administration that just doesn’t govern effectively.
Krugman explained:
For all its cries of “support the troops,” 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.
What makes this a particular shame is that in the Clinton years, veterans’ health care — like the Federal Emergency Management Agency — became a shining example of how good leadership can revitalize a troubled government program. By the early years of this decade the Veterans Health Administration was, by many measures, providing the highest-quality health care in America. (It probably still is: Walter Reed is a military facility, not run by the V.H.A.)
But as with FEMA, the Bush administration has done all it can to undermine that achievement. And the Walter Reed scandal is another Hurricane Katrina: the moment when the administration’s misgovernment became obvious to everyone.
And in this case, some believe the Michael Brown in this story may be Jim Nicholson, secretary of veterans affairs.
Mr. Nicholson, 69, a Vietnam War veteran and past chairman of the Republican National Committee, was appointed by Mr. Bush to lead the department in 2005.
He has been 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 as returning soldiers move from facilities like Walter Reed, which is run by the Defense Department, into the veterans affairs system.
Critics say he has under-emphasized his agency’s budget needs to Congress, has not responded to calls for more mental health workers and brain trauma specialists and has failed to overhaul disability claims procedures.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s national security panel and the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee are holding hearings today. The administration is about to see what actual support for the trooops is all about.