Posted on 03/05/2007 12:36:05 PM PST by neverdem
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.
The official reaction to the revelations at Walter Reed has been swift, and it has exposed the potential political costs of ignoring Oliva's 24.3 million comrades -- America's veterans -- many of whom are among the last standing...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Lucky you. How did you manage that?
yep.
I understand why this mess will never be privatized, and I'm sympathetic - but that IS the answer, above the field hospital level.
"So did the liberals of the MSM make that episode up? Is there any reason that an alleged "conservative" could find those conditions and responsibility ducking acceptable?"
This isn't ABOUT political affiliation.
Try to find a "high profile reporter" that ISN'T a liberal. The system is rigged.
My POINT is that there is an opportunity to have your voices heard NOW....while this matter is in the public eye.
I've been fighting this dilemma for YEARS.
I never said there was any magic answer....just that there is a small beam of light being focused upon the arena and it behooves anyone who really CARES about the situation to take action before everyone goes back to sleep. These opportunities come along all too infrequently.
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Here's one for the GOP-CONSERVATIVE members hereabout to consider. There's a Bill out there called the "Veterans Right to Know Act" that specifically addresses issues in hard to document cases where the DOD/VA are conspiring to hide data which could be instrumental in acquiring meaningful health care and/or decent compensation for those injured in the line of duty.
The vast majority of the 43 co-sponsors are/were Democrats...I can't for the life of me figure out why MORE Republicans/Conservatives haven't gotten on board...???
There's been a pattern with legislation in this arena which stacks up the same way every time. These matters are definitely NON-partisan. I'm pretty familiar with the goings on and can safely say I got MY Congressman to co-sponsor the Bill.
What gives...???
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The Library of Congress > THOMAS Home > Bills, Resolutions > Search Results
Really? I have dental problems that are tracable to incompetent army care...
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Who, in your opinion, should accept responsibility?
"they never fathom the power-mad, angry, ill-trained, under experienced, job entitled and often, downright cruel bureaucrats who screen eligibility in all government programs.
Goodness help the person who answers a question wrong on a form, because they'll get bounced out of the system on their sick tails, without so much as a howdy do by these people."
Actually, it's WORSE than that.
There are parties in administrative review positions in the VA who get BONUSES for denying claims....sort of a "quota" system, if you will...this is madness, bordering on the criminal.
I know quite directly of the autocrats to whom you refer....and, I've BEATEN them [somewhat] at their own game. Unfortunately, you have to be RUTHLESS and UNRELENTING to get there in most cases.
The saddest part of this whole mess is the grief I've had to take from other veterans in the process. This is about acquiring life-saving health care and improving the quality of life for veterans....NOT about some personal crusade or "favor".
Had I done NOTHING, I would LITERALLY be dead now...and others as well. Can I personally attribute any advances to my own credit...??? I don't know, furthermore I don't CARE.
It's just that I'm CERTAIN of what happens and who "wins" when we do NOTHING. People have to get over the social labeling and work TOGETHER if this is ever going to improve.
Unfortunately, it's near impossible to get ANYONE to act on these matters...it just stings more when they call themselves "conservative" or "patriotic" and then do NOTHING.
I have to say that the care I have had at the Palo Alto VA Hospital (CA) has been wonderful. It has been the most thorough and best care I've ever had. Last year I had eye surgery after a condition developed on deployment and the doc was from Stanford.
I'm sorry to hear that my experience sounds like the exception rather than the rule.
Congress, which has failed to adequately fund and oversee the VA for at least the past 50 years. I'm not contending the General shouldn't have been fired. But it should have been done in a way that spotlighted bipartisan malfeasance over a long period. Now it's just one more partisan weapon to use against Bush and the war.
"From Ray Oliva, the distraught 70-year-old vet from Kelseyville, Calif., came this: "I wrote a letter to Senators Feinstein and Boxer a few years ago asking why I had to wear Hospital gowns that had holes in them and torn and why some of the Vets had to ask for beds that had good mattress instead of broken and old. Wheel chairs old and tired and the list goes on and on. I never did get a response."
I can't wait to see when the LSM picks up on THAT piece of news....
Does Military health care and VA health care come under military spending, the VA or both? Is it the same thing? Is it considered a social service or military spending?
I had 4 impacted wisdom teeth taken out in 1 shot, whick included a golf ball sized cyst in my jaw i didn't know about. I never neede pain killers after the first day, and there was hardly any swelling. The captain of the ship ordered us to have 3 annual checkups, not the usual 2.
We had USPHS doctors except my time TAD with the NAVY.
As a coastie in boston, we had USPHS doctors. I never had any beef with the NAVY docs when I was TAD, either.
Hmmm. And my dentist tells me I need ten k in reconstruction work, thanks to the army dentists.
Of course, he could be lying...
LOL.
Yikes, that sucks! Good luck to you!
I posted this on another thread but I will reprise it here.
It is about a MONOPOLY. The soldiers/patients have no choice in their care and the provider/hospital has zero incentive to provide good service.
In the private sector, you have to continually improve your product AND do it at lower cost or someone else will and you are out of business. There is no such control on a monopoly like govt. or any private sector monopoly either.
We probably need to give the wounded payment vouchers and for the most part, they will on their own find the most appropriate care facility and if there is a profit to be made, I suspect the private sector will be falling all over themselves to provide the best care.
I think that was the problem. They didn't prescribe any physical therapy, or they didn't do it in a timely manner. And how could the rib puncture the lung if it wasn't displaced? He broke the rib, and they sent him home. It punctured his lung while he was home. His wife came in and found him spitting up blood. That doesn't seem right to me.
By the way, this man is a genuine war hero. He was shot down in Vietnam, ended up gutshot and permanently disabled. The ambulance comes in the middle of the night on a regular basis for him, what he has given for our country makes tears come to my eyes.
Something is missing here. A stable but fractured rib doesn't puncture the lung hours or days after the fracture. Something has to make that broken rib rip into his lung, after which he should have become short of breath fairly quickly. Maybe there was a second tramatic event to the broken rib? Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to me.
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