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Home Front: Politix
Bush Names Seven to Veteran Care Panel
2007-03-10
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Friday named seven more members to the commission investigating the treatment of wounded veterans. Bush has ordered a comprehensive review of conditions at military and veterans hospitals, which have been overwhelmed by injured troops from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The review comes after disclosures of shoddy outpatient health care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

The seven new members join the commission's co-chairs, former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., and former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. They are:

  • Marc Giammatteo, a former U.S. Army captain whose leg was severely injured during an attack in Iraq. He has undergone more than 30 surgeries at Walter Reed.
  • Jose Ramos, a student at George Mason University. While in the Navy, he treated soldiers injured in Iraq. In 2004, during his second tour of duty in Iraq, he lost an arm in combat.
  • Tammy Edwards, a research assistant at the Geneva Foundation. In 2005, her husband, a U.S. Army staff sergeant, was severely burned in Iraq when a 500-pound bomb exploded under his vehicle.
  • Kenneth Fisher, chairman of the Fisher House Foundation, a nonprofit that builds "comfort homes" for families of hospitalized veterans.
  • C. Martin Harris, a physician who has served on other government and private commissions that have examined health care problems.
  • Edward Eckenhoff, a leader in rehabilitation medicine and president of the National Rehabilitation Hospital.
  • Gail Wilensky, an economist and senior fellow at Project HOPE, an international health education foundation.
    • Posted by:Steve White

    #5  It's not funny any more. Here we have a short discussion on the panel makeup, and Steve White levels a conclusion which anybody with a brain would consider the only resolution. However, Bush and the politbureau will play politics and the ever popular funding shell game over this till he hands the red phone over to Rudy.
    Hey Bushy, instead of picking a panel, pick your nose. I can't wait till this jerk is history.
    Posted by: wxjames   2007-03-10 22:03  

    #4  SW nails it, however, no government program has been closed since the WPA...and I'm not sure they don't still have an office somewhere. Where did George dig up former 'face of America teammate' Shalala?
    Posted by: Phineter Thraviger   2007-03-10 16:57  

    #3  Having trained in three different VA hospitals, my solution would be a bit radical:

    close them.

    Oh, keep a few of the most modern ones as a back-up to the military medical system.

    But vets with service-connected disabilities would get the equivalent of a platinum American Express card for the health care they need, good at any hospital or doctor's office in the country. They get the care, Uncle Sam gets (and pays) the bill.

    Vets with non-service connected disabilities would get medical care with means-testing and eligibility criteria that allow them to get care as good as they get at the VA today.

    Shutter the VA hospitals. We didn't promise vets a VA hospital system, we promised them health care. That's what we should deliver.
    Posted by: Steve White   2007-03-10 14:03  

    #2  TW - I hope you're right, but I don't have very high hopes. I've been involved with the VA since I retired, and it's ALWAYS been frustrating. There are three main problems: not enough money, too many bureaucrats, and decaying "temporary" facilities that have been in existence since World War II. There needs to be a major overhaul, but I doubt this panel, or any other, will do what's really necessary. I'll be writing about this in my own blog a bit later.
    Posted by: Old Patriot   2007-03-10 13:47  

    #1  This sounds like a working panel, with serious depth of personal experience to tackle the problem.
    Posted by: trailing wife   2007-03-10 13:38  

    00:00