News Coming out of Walter Reed Hospital

The Rev. Henry Morris, New Haven, CT
takes a look at the Walter Reed health care injustices -- vents with some hard questions about our assumptions about public and private sector solutions. -ed.

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The news coming out of Walter Reed Hospital is so offensive it is hard to know where to begin denouncing it. Americans are outraged to learn that our wounded soldiers are treated so shabbily, and shocked that our leaders, who never tire of making pious speeches about “supporting our troops”, could allow this to go on undetected and unremedied.

Well, pardon me for saying so, but who are we trying to kid? Were we sleeping through 2003 when the soldiers were sent to Iraq without body armor and deployed in unarmored trucks? Did we not notice that folks in small towns and large cities across the country were taking up collections to buy used bullet proof vests to send to their loved ones in Iraq? Did we not care that our under supplied, under armored, under protected troops were deployed without any attempt by the government to raise the money to support them?

The horrible news coming from Walter Reed Hospital is not limited to that hospital. It is news about our entire system of health care for military personnel and veterans. I should say systems. There is one system of health care for military personnel and a separate system for veterans and they are not in sync. Navigating the military health care system is one thing, navigating the veteran health care system is quite another.

One would think that a soldier who had a traumatic brain injury would be able to count on careful and consistent health care, but one would be mistaken to assume so. The Congress, which until this week seemed largely undisturbed by the huge holes in health care for soldiers and vets, now is falling all over itself to “take action”. They will investigate. They will legislate. And then what?

Perhaps one good medical outcome of this scandal will be Congress having its spine restored. Don’t hold your breath.

Before this moment passes and all the outrage is assuaged by some band aids and a promise to reform the health care systems sometime real soon, let’s allow our anger to motivate us to rethink a few things.

There is a long list of things that need rethinking but I am starting with one that I think is causing us a lot of grief, including a lot of the grief we are hearing about at Walter Reed.

I refer to the assumption that public services are best provided by the private, for profit sector which is among this Administration’s most fervently held beliefs. This Administration want s to “privatize” everything starting with Social Security and public education and continuing through all the essential government functions, even including military services. Most people are not aware that the Army is not supplied by the Army but by Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation.

As the smoke clears over Walter Reed, it will become clear that the hell-hole housing we now know so much about was outsourced to a private company formed by a group of – I kid you not – former Halliburton executives. Through the miracle of privatization, we can provide essential services much more efficiently and at substantial savings to the tax payers. So goes the theory. Behold the results.

There is no problem this Administration will not address with a hearty transferal of public funds to private corporations. And look at how successful it has been! Behold Walter Reed, the latest poster boy for this insane approach to public service.

Henry E. Morris