GAO Report: Walter Reed Problems Have Not Been Fixed

Remember Walter Reed? After the huge scandal last spring, President Bush and the members of Congress promised to improve troops' care. They promised to take action and get our wounded veterans the care they were waiting for. They promised to make things right. Well, that promise has been broken.

This week, we got definitive proof that our nation's wounded veterans are still waiting for government leaders to deliver much needed resources. According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the response to shoddy outpatient treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has been woefully inadequate.

This latest report joins the increasing chorus of bipartisan commissions, independent review groups, and task forces which all confirm that the DoD and the VA are ill-prepared to meet the needs of returning servicemembers. Among its findings, the GAO concluded that there has been little progress in rectifying staffing shortfalls, facilitating VA/DoD data sharing, and streamlining disability evaluation systems. Processing disability payments still takes an average of 177 days. Furthermore, efforts to improve the care provided to servicemembers with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) have also been largely unsuccessful: only 6 of the Army's 32 Warrior Transition Units had completed training for all staff. (You can read the complete report here.)

The bottom line: the problems of Walter Reed have not been fixed. Not even close. More than seven months have passed since the major problems were revealed by the Washington Post-- and after seven months, our veterans continue to wait. While Congress and the President went on vacation this summer, people like my courageous friend Annette McLeod and her wounded husband Wendell were paying the price for our governments negligence. Our nation's heroes and their families deserve better.

Americans were outraged when they first saw the images from Walter Reed. It is time for them to be outraged again.

Follow Paul Rieckhoff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PaulRieckhoff

Comments

[Halsey]

12:49 PM on 09/30/2007

Paul, You write:

Americans were outraged when they first saw the images from Walter Reed. It is time for them to be outraged again.

We are a nation of ADD...15 second commercial spots...fashion that lasts..oh..about 5 minutes.."realworld"..15 seconds of fame celebrities.. See..the Walter Reed Scandal WAS just too many months ago for the average amerikan to remember..much less care about.
It made good copy..everyone could "act" dismayed and pledge to fix it.. The Brittany and Paris got tickets, OJ got arrested...

and now this new wordspeak "warriors"..now that IS very scary orwellian speak!...yes..de-humanize "them"... I think you nailed it!

[OpusIsUnderTheBed]

09:38 AM on 09/30/2007

The sheets are clean and pressed in George's bedroom.

[Halsey]

01:32 PM on 09/30/2007

I hope this site works...it's a must read..

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/nat?guid=20070930/46ff1f40_3ca6_1552620070930215817232

[splashy]

07:42 PM on 09/28/2007

Corporatizing services is the culprit. Return the services to what they should be, funded and run by the VA COMPLETELY!

Corporatists just want to cut costs so they can make more and more money, while hurting the people they are supposed to be serving. They ACTUALLY serve the stockholders, who are lazy, pampered and wealthy people that don't NEED to be served in this way. They need to find some other place to practice their parasitism.

[Kendo Nagasaki]

08:50 PM on 09/27/2007

How many US vets are badly disabled now ?

Missing arms, legs and brain damage.

[JustOldBill]

05:25 PM on 09/27/2007

I am grateful that attention is still being paid to the problems at Walter Reed. It saddens me, however, that so many people do not realize that Walter Reed is one of the better care facilities for veterans. The problems are systemic. Some folks are touting a study that found that VA Health Care Services were the best available. I have no idea how those researchers could skew the numbers so much as to have it look that way. I am convinced that the Health Care provided to members of Congress is superior to that accorded to Veterans. Just to name one.
As a 100% Service-Connected Disabled Viet Nam Combat Vet I have had many opportunities to try to use the VA health care system. I like so many of my brothers and sisters have finally just given up. It is not worth the frustration. It's great that people want to support the troops. Please don't abandon these troops once they do get home as is the current practice.

[1stsgtbill]

06:21 PM on 09/27/2007

Does everyone want a really bad scenerio.Last week when I visited my local Veterans Wannabe Hosipital,I was in the waiting room and a young man came in in a wheelchair pushed by his wife. I started talking to him and he was just home from Walter Reed and he had made an appointment to see a DR. there. He had severe head trauma and spinal injuries.I thanked him for his scarifice and tried to prepare him for the VA system.Then the DR. came out( who is Iranian from Iran 6 months before) and I thought this young wounded Veteran was going to go ballastic. You could see the horror and fear in his eyes when being confronted by one of the very people he had just been fighting. It was only then I realised that I would have felt the same way if a Vietnamese had come to treat me when I first got home, or a Korean had tried to treat my dad in 1951 or a Japanese my Uncle in 1944. I asked one of the nurse's why they were hiring all these people from the middle east, and she told me "because they don't have to be licensed in this country and they are the only ones willing to work for what the VA pays" I was speechless. Where is the media on this?

[newjerseybadger]

07:58 PM on 09/27/2007

Umm. (1) If the doctor was Iranian (Persian) rather than Iraqi (Arab), the veteran's problem may have been an inability to tell different nationalities apart. (2) "The very people he had just been fighting" presumably do not have permission to work in the United States.

I have sympathy for the vet -- he has injuries I hope never to match (I'm not a veteran either) -- but if he's going to treat every dark-skinned male from the Middle East and points east as an enemy, he's in for a rough time in America.

[bluebela]

04:27 PM on 09/27/2007

We need Don Imus back to keep saying what needs to be said about the Walter Reed debacle, shaming government officials into doing something. Oh, that's right, I almost forgot. Al Sharpton took his job away, but dined with Bill O'Reilly and gave him a pass for much more offensive racial comments. Go figure.

[TankerRat]

03:33 PM on 09/27/2007

A lot of venting today. This is good. We all need it. Now WHAT are WE going to do about it. You've got an election coming up. You gonna step into that booth and replace one set of incompetent bozo's with another set of incompetent bozo's. Vote D or R and that's what you'll get. I guarentee it. Meantime those who in the words of Abraham Lincoln "have borne the battle, his widow, and his orphan" will see no changes. Take a damn long look into that mirror and ask yourself if you want to be part of that. If you determine you want to change it then change it because you're the only ones who can.

[drricklippin]

02:55 PM on 09/27/2007

You are woefully naive if you think broken health care systems in the government or private sector can be fixed in 7 months.

We have a rapid realtime meltdown in health care in this nation. I have blogged about this since Dec 2005 (see below link).

It will take years to fix it. We need to start, however, with those who have served our nation, especially on the battlefield, and the uninsured poor.

Dr. Rick Lippin
http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com

[coonce]

02:22 PM on 09/27/2007

I highly suggest somebody go in as a patient and be taped and with a monitor button on them somewhere.

Once you've gotten proof - put it on YouTube.

[tililek]

02:20 PM on 09/27/2007

Defense Secretary Gates promised quick action on this problem when it came to light, yet nothing much seems to have happened. Where is he now in this controvery, surely he is the one most at fault for the inactivity.

[hopeless277]

02:19 PM on 09/27/2007

Well, DUH!!!! WHY DO YOU IDIOTS CONTINUE TO GIVE ANY CREDANCE TO ANYTHING GEORGE W. BUSH SAYS???????

Sorry to yell but Jesus H. Freeking Christ, people! Bush does not believe in helping people. Not veterans, not children, not the eldery, NOBODY! Blowing up people and places is soooooo much more empowering to a 'drug' store cowboy like ol' George.

Nothing will be done to help a single person(defense contractors and cronies aside) while he is president.

Impeach the cheerleader, save the world.

[jaygirl]

02:05 PM on 09/27/2007

SUPPORT THE TROOPS, SUPPORT THE TROOPS! This is the calling card of this administration and the neo-conservatives. They have won every bill they wanted which funded an impossible occupation in Iraq. They have taken away habeas corpus (right to a hearing and a trial), rights for free speech and assembly, right of possee comitatus (which protects citizens against military rule), protection from spying on Americans, and most everything else in the Constitution in the name national security while calling out to SUPPORT THE TROOPS!

In the meantime, for five years the troops have been overworked and under protected. They are sitting ducks for snipers because their vests are inadequate. They get blown up in vehicles which are not reinforced properly. They are underpaid and given long duty tenures with a short turn around. If they should survive but are wounded, they have long waits for poor physical and mental care. Walter Reid is the shining example of this injustice. My suggestion is, "take the plastic ribbons off your cars and start protesting the Iraq war". This way you will really be SUPPORTING THE TROOPS.

[CaseyBabes]

08:18 PM on 09/27/2007

You couldn't even get the posse comitatus act right. It forbids the use of the military to "enforce the law." That's all, enforce the law -- yes, but Martial Law is a different circumstance.
You cite the difficulties endured by the military as if they haven't always endured similarities -- think Valley Forge.
Nice of you to care about the wounded, but they get the best this country has to offer. Evidently the problem is with followup care and for that you cannot blame the Bush Administration, rather, take it back a few years to when the requirement to qualify for VA benefits was reduced from several years to 180 freakin' days. In other words, a troop can get life long healthcare for serving 6 months, AND CLOG UP THE SYSTEM FROM OVERWHELMING NUMBERS. Ever wonder why the VA is under staffed, under funded, under supplied? It is under everything because our stupid ass congress once again catered to us in order to get troops, way back the!

[Wyndespelle]

02:00 PM on 09/27/2007

I am a Vietnam Era Veteran of the US Army but I did not go to 'Nam. I had a spinal injury while on duty that I refused to see a military doctor about and suffered through my last 6 months of active duty. I have suffered most of my after-service civilian life with it ever since 1965. There was no such thing as Micro surgery in those early years and I did not want some yoyo doctor screwing up my spine so that I couldn't walk. That is why I never consulted a Military Doctor although I told the Interviewer about it when I took my Exit Interview from active duty. He, I thought, made a note of it and told me I could go to the Veterans Hospital in Durham, NC which was the closest to my home, if I wanted to do so. I didn't go: I had heard far too many horror stories of THAT hospital from WW II and Korean War vets while growing up. Later, when I began getting Veteran's Care, I applied for a disability which was perfunctorily denied at even the lowest percentage ~ 10%, I believe ~ that, with Social Security, would have made it possible for me to have a LIFE in lieu of a mere EXISTENCE from pay-check to pay-check. I also had, and have, other, less significant, Service connected problems.
The needs of Veterans is of paramount importance: There is an extremely close bond between our Veterans and we need to remember that they (we) are trained in warfare skills and that many of us would gladly join a revolutionary army today, right now, in a NY nanosecond if we thought it were feasible to usurp this Administration and imprison both the Executive Branch and the Congress for life ~ preferably in Guantanamo. It is almost to that point but not quite there yet. Bush and his Congress had best tread softly where the Vets are concerned and they had best also fix the VA System now and stop wasting money on Iraq and Iran.

[Kendo Nagasaki]

01:43 PM on 09/27/2007

One must assume that this Neocon administration is deliberately using war and its exorbitant cost as a way of starving the beast i.e. preventing any progressive social legislation.

Sounds cynical. But is it ?

[hootie1fan]

02:15 PM on 09/27/2007

That and paying off their loyal campaign contributors and future employers.

[richw23]

01:40 PM on 09/27/2007

'Warriot Transition Unit', 'Warfighters', 'Boots On the Ground', 'Date Certain', 'Status Quo Ante', 'Camp Liberty'. Don't catchy and/or aggresive names and slogans count for anything?

Seriously, the name 'Warrior Transition Unit', or 'Warrior' for that matter imply a toughness that doesn't need any special attention. I guess when you're too hurt to be useful any more is when you truly find out what "An Army of One" means.

Does everybody forget this same shit went on during and after Vietnam? Does anybody think it will really change after when we start the next war after we've forgotten Iraq?

[FOXYLADY]

01:46 PM on 09/27/2007

I REMEMBER RICH23 AND I STILL SEE THE DISABLED NAM VETS IN THEIR WHEELCHAIRS IN FRONT OF STORES SELLING MOMENTOS IN ORDER TO MAKE SOME MONEY TO LIVE ON....I REMEMBER GOING TO DC AND SEEING MANY DEMONSTRATING AND TRYING TO GET ATTENTION ON THE PROBLEM OF "MIA"S... I WILL NEVER FORGET AND THAT'S WHY I AM AGAINST THIS GD IRAQI WAR STARTED BY FORKING BUSH AND HIS MINIONS WITH LIES AND MACHINATIONS WITH THE EXPATRIOT IRAQ'S IN THIS COUNTRY...SUCKING THE LIFE OUT OF ALL THEY CAN GET FOR THEMSELVES. FORGET THE GUYS NAME BUT HE'S RECENTLY BEEN IN THE NEWS AGAIN AND PULLING HIS CRAP ABOUT IRAQ. DAMN BUSH AND HIS HYPOCRACY AND ARROGANT LIES AND MACHINATIONS

[richw23]

02:19 PM on 09/27/2007

A little while after writing the previous comment, it occured to me that I don't remember when US Soldiers have been referred to with such war-like terminology.

Terms I know of:
Rangers, SnakeEaters, Green Berets, Grunts, Lifers, Jarheads, Squids

Even Petraeus refers to them as "Warfighters". Is this a deliberate Orwellian ploy to make us feel less compassion. Anyone that's referred to as a "Warrior" or "Warfighter" is almot invincible. We're conditioned by fiction to think they never get hurt too badly; occasionally they die a glorius, heroic death.

"Back at home a young wife waits. Her Green Beret has met his fate. He has died for those oppressed. Leaving her his last request. Put silver wings on my son's chest. Make him one of America's best. He'll be a man they'll test one day. Have him win the Green Beret"

The message - you're born in order to serve your country in whatever fucked-up non-defensive war of attrition it currently decides is worth fighting. Sounds noble but is totally perverted. Like having to endure brain-damage for the rest of your life with only the help you fight for after the government throws you away.

Even "status quo ante". I've never heard that used before Condi used it everytime she could work it in a few months ago in some speech.

It's like we're developing a special language so we can be more warlike and austere in our dealings with other countries.