We Americans like to think of ourselves as civilized. Pick up a paper, click on the evening news, turn on your computer, you'll see we are not as wonderful as we think we are.
Our latest proof of this is comes from the loving way we treat our veterans.
Reports of a rising death rate and rooms spattered with blood, urine and feces at the Armed Forces Retirement Home prompted the Pentagon yesterday to begin investigating conditions at the veterans facility in Northwest Washington.
The Government Accountability Office warned the Pentagon this week that residents of the home "may be at risk" in light of allegations of severe health-care problems. Residents have been admitted to Walter Reed Army Medical Center with "the most serious type of pressure sores" and, in one case, with maggots in a wound, according to a GAO letter sent to the Defense Department.
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Cox was hired from private industry in 2002 to bring down costs. In the past three years, the workforce has been cut from 736 to 447, and the operating budget has been reduced from $76 million to $54.7 million, according to figures provided by the home. The maintenance staff has shrunk from 127 to nine, despite a rising population, according to the senators' letter.
(snip)
In one statement, Cox said the reports of human waste in the rooms may have stemmed from an outbreak in February of highly contagious norovirus, which infected more than 100 residents. "When you're sick with vomiting and diarrhea, sometime you miss the john," he said.
FEBURARY! I know many health care workers. I know that patients can get sick, I also know that they clean the mess illness leaves and they don't wait a month to do so.
Is cutting the care and costs of that care to our veterans supporting the troops? Am I the only one thoroughly disgusted and ashamed of these conditions and outraged at the administrators comments?
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6 comments:
Hey, look whose back...
Yeah, finally! It's not saying much for the cable company of the southwest, but they forgot about me - three times!
Looks like somebody is having a belated road rage! I can't blame you, ziem, for this sorry episode is a prime example of the one and only real skill this admin. posesses - it's able to talk from the both sides of the mouth at the same time.
Despite of the fact, that your posts don't inform about more important issues, such as latest of Ann Nichole Smith, I am glad you are back in the saddle again! ;)
Welcome back lady and yes you have some catching up to do. The Bush assministration has done nothing but drag us closer to being a full blown third world country. Nothing much has changed but it has gotten worse.
This is utterly unconscionable... and typical of this administration's true attitude toward veterans.
For what it's worth, I know some VA Hospital employees in Houston, and they're disgusted, too... not that the Houston hospital is such a mess as Walter Reed, but that they're being forced to try to provide adequate care despite funding cuts beyond all reason, and Bush is generating new severely injured veterans at a disturbing rate.
Yes Steve, and we, who want the troops home safe, don't support them. Just ask dick or shrub... or any neocon for that matter.
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