When Will the Buck Stop at the Right Place? (Updated 3/9/2007) 1
What Happened at Walter Reed?
Bush.
The guy who was going to restore integrity to the Oval Office.
Oh, yeah, and Halliburton.
Dick Polman sums it up (emphasis added):
Some commentators have equated this scandal, which victimizes vets, with the Katrina debacle that victimized the poor of New Orleans. But that strikes me as a facile comparison – because, in some ways, the Walter Reed scandal is worse. Notwithstanding all the Bush administration incompetence that was exposed in the wake of Katrina (incompetence that was heavily documented by House Republican investigators, to their credit), a hurricane is still an act of nature. Whereas Walter Reed is an act of man – or, more accurately, it is the product of man’s inaction.
(snippage)
. . . Thanks to cost-cutting measures initiated by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, coupled with Bush’s “competitive sourcing†program, private companies were being tapped to handle facilities management, patient care, and guard duty. As a result, many skilled government workers decided to leave. Yet, while all this was happening, the caseload expanded, courtesy of the wars in Afghanistan and especially Iraq.
Profanity fails me.
More here from TBogg.
Addendum, 3/9/2007:
Paul Krugman:
The problem starts with money. The administration uses carefully cooked numbers to pretend it has been generous to veterans, but the historical data contained in its own budget for fiscal 2008 tell the true story. The quagmire in Iraq has vastly increased the demands on the Veterans Administration, yet since 2001 federal outlays for veterans’ medical care have actually lagged behind overall national health spending.
To save money, the administration has been charging veterans for many formerly free services. For example, Salon reported in 2005 that some Walter Reed patients were forced to pay hundreds of dollars each month for their meals.
More important, the administration has broken long-standing promises of lifetime health care to those who defend our nation. Two months before the invasion of Iraq, the VHA, which previously had offered care to all veterans, introduced severe new restrictions on who was entitled to enroll in its health-care system. As the agency’s Web site helpfully explains, veterans whose income exceeds as little as $27,790 a year, and who lack “special eligibilities such as a compensable service-connected condition or recent combat service,” will be turned away.
March 9, 2007 at 2:42 pm
The buck will stop at the right “place” when that “place” has been deprived of the bodies, bricks, & teflon that’s covering him.