(HOST) Commentator Bill Seamans is concerned that a fresh update on the health care provided to wounded American soldiers – doesn’t show much improvement.
(SEAMANS) "The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation" – Those words were spoken by our first commander in chief, general George Washington. And, yes, they could be applied to the deplorable way our wounded troops have been cared for today at a time when the Army is having difficulties meeting its voluntary enlistment quotas.
After the Walter Reed Army Hospital scandal there was a flurry of promises to put things right – but not yet. A subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, after a recent hearing virtually unnoticed by the public, found a significant gap between the Army leadership’s optimistic promises and the "reality on the ground" as they like to say about Iraq.
The hearing provoked a scathing New York Times editorial which said – and I quote – "The bad news about the Army’s treatment of our wounded soldiers keeps coming – the generals keep apologizing and insisting that things are getting better but they are not" – so said the Times. The Army had set up so-called "warrior transition units" to swiftly cut through bureaucratic delays to assure timely care for wounded troops so they could more quickly return to duty or be discharged into the Department of Veterans Affairs medical system.
Each soldier would be assigned a team consisting of a physician, a nurse and a squad leader to monitor and make sure that he or she got continuing quick care. But the Army failed to anticipate the flood of wounded victims from Iraq and Afghanistan and the new system has been overwhelmed and understaffed. The New York Times said that the waiting list is so long – with some troops in line from two months to a year to get assigned to a transition team – that their frustration has created among some a high risk of drug overdose, suicide or other dangerous behavior.
After the hearing a member of the House Armed Services Committee asked some poignant questions: Why did the Army fail to adequately staff its warrior transition teams? Why did it fail to anticipate the surge in demand? And why did it take visits from a congressional committee to prod the Army into recognizing and promising yet again to fix the problem?
It’s apparent that there continues to be a severe leadership problem in the Army’s medical system – that the extraordinary work our medics do on the battlefield is not followed up in the hospitals here at home. At a previous hearing the Army’s surgeon general said, "We never leave a soldier behind on the battlefield – or lost in a bureaucracy." George Washington would certainly worry over that statement.