Investigating the Horror of Walter Reed and American Veteran Care

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After enough attention has finally paid attention to how bad outpatient care was at Walter Reed's Building 18, two generals have been relieved, and the Secretary of the Army resigned on Friday.

And for the latest, this shit is happening across the country, and congressional hearings are starting today to find out WTF is going on.

Sandy Karen was horrified when her 21-year-old son was discharged from the Naval Medical Center in San Diego a few months ago and told to report to the outpatient barracks, only to find the room swarming with fruit flies, trash overflowing and a syringe on the table. "The staff sergeant says, 'Here are your linens' to my son, who can't even stand up," said Karen, of Brookeville, Md. "This kid has an open wound, and I'm going to put him in a room with fruit flies?" She took her son to a hotel instead.

Support the troops, wot wot.

― kingfish, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:22 (nineteen years ago)

Gates is going to end up looking like a golden genius if he manages to last more than a year.

― TOMBOT, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:27 (nineteen years ago)

How much scuttlebutt about this kinda shit do you hear at work?

― kingfish, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:11 (nineteen years ago)

not much, nobody here has family in the war or anything. all my vet buddies got out safe & sound.

― TOMBOT, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:12 (nineteen years ago)

Oh you'll like this bit: guess who had the bid to clean the place?

yay for the power of the free market, and constant unwarranted/uncontested privatization!

― kingfish, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:58 (nineteen years ago)

Oh yeah, and they knew about this for a while, but didn't do anything about it

“We did not go public with these concerns, because we did not want to undermine the confidence of the patients and their families and give the Army a black eye while fighting a war,” Young said.

― kingfish, Thursday, 8 March 2007 20:35 (nineteen years ago)

six years pass...

More horror
http://va-opiates.apps.cironline.org/#/
^^ interactive map of opiate presciptions to veterans through VA hospitals. search in your area!

http://cironline.org/node/5261
^^^ super sad article about veterans who have struggled with drug abuse/depression/suicide after developing opiate addictions when they came home from combat and sought help at the VA

Before dawn, a government van picked up paratrooper Jeffrey Waggoner for the five-hour drive to a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in southern Oregon. His orders: detox from a brutal addiction to painkillers.
He had only the clothes on his back, his watch, an MP3 player and a two-page pain contract the Army made him sign, a promise to get clean.
But instead of keeping Waggoner away from his vice, medical records show the VA hospital in Roseburg kept him so doped up that he could barely stay awake. Then, inexplicably, the VA released him for the weekend with a cocktail of 19 prescription medications, including 12 tablets of highly addictive oxycodone.
Three hours later, Waggoner, 32, was dead of a drug overdose, slumped in a heap in front of his room at the Sleep Inn motel.

What a horrible way to treat people.

― Untt (La Lechera), Sunday, 29 September 2013 21:06 (twelve years ago)

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