That’s a good damn question. We lure them into service with big signing bonuses, promises of college tuition and then, when they return broken and bruised — mentally and physically — we torture them with bureaucratic bullshit, deny benefits and turn our faces when we hear of their suicides or life on the street.
No, of course not every veteran falls through the cracks. But, a lot of them do. Too many of them do.
Just this weekend, I ran into a homeless man in fatigues, a weathered metal pinned to his jacket. He was sleeping in the corner of a Burger King in Virginia, trying to stay warm on a cold day. I touched his shoulder, he jumped. I asked him if he could use the cash I was holding out to him. He nodded, looked at the floor and tried to hide his right arm — which was missing a hand.
What’s wrong with our society?
Here’s one example of our ridiculousness:
North Carolina’s members of Congress have grown increasingly impatient with the military over its role in water contamination more than 30years ago at Camp Lejeune.The Department of theNavy has refused to pay for a $1.6million mortality study that could indicate a trend in deaths among former residents of Camp Lejeune.
U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican, has blocked two Navy presidential appointees and vowed that he’ll stop every nominee until the department ends its “continued intransigence” on funding the study.
Burr and U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, have vowed to push legislation on health care for the affected families despite a recent setback in the Senate.
And over in the House, U.S. Rep. Brad Miller, a Raleigh Democrat, has gathered nearly 20 co-sponsors for identical legislation that he hopes will have better success.
Some estimates are thatover a 30-year period, as many as 1million people were exposed to well water that contained trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, benzene and vinyl chloride.
Read the rest of this Raleigh News and Observer article, by Barbara Barret, here.
Read on, from the Washington Post: Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army’s Top Medical Facility
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2010.
Yeah, I’m sure that Obama is hoping that more surgical accidents occur in the future, whether healthcare reform occurs or not. I mean, between people NOT dying as a result of surgical mistakes, or people DYING as a result of surgical errors, I’m sure Obama would choose the latter. That doesn’t sound ridiculous AT ALL.
Seriously, for all I know, you may have some good points in your reasoning as to why you are not pro-healthcare reform. But you, as so many others on the right, have decided to disregard those and set on an argument full of faulty rhetoric and scare tactics, rather than focusing on moving an actual constructive debate forward. For some reason, the right is trying to move their agenda forward by scaring granny with stories about “death panels”, rather than actually trying to make a convincing argument that would possibly appeal to / sway the minds of those who can see through such faulty arguments.
Saying that this man died as a result of government run healthcare is like saying your private insurance was to blame if another driver struck your car head on and killed you. I understand wanting to assign blame, but at least put it in the right place and leave agendas out of it. If the man died as a result of a surgical error, the surgeon is to blame, if anyone.
Frank, you clueless oaf: It was the BUSH ADMINISTRATION that pushed our soldiers into combat and the BUSH ADMINISTRATION that failed to take care of them. Look back to 2008, the veteran groups backed Obama, not McCain — and definitely not Bush. Why? Because Dems are much more likely to actually care for our vets.
As far as the U.S. Senator’s health care — he went to a Naval hospital for treatment.
The problem with our veteran’s health care doesn’t have anything to do with “government run healthcare,” as you suggest, Frank. It has a lot more to do with the fact that we, as a society, aren’t doing a good enough job caring for our vets — a problem created by Republicans.
Sure, the Dems will fix this, too. Though, I’m sure, as soon as a GOB douche bag is back in office they’ll suck funding away from the vets and funnel it right back into earmarks.
From 2/2007 (this would be pre-Obama, Frank): http://www.truthout.org/article/veterans-face-consecutive-budget-cuts
Hey no arguments here on the worthlessness of the dems – the Democrats are just as useless as the Republicans anymore. America voted in a supermajority to get things done, and they blew it. They’ll probably not get that chance again in a long time, because they obviously don’t know what to do with it when they have it.
At the same time, while the president should fully expect whatever critcism Americans are ready to throw his way, expecting everything in this country to be fixed after 1 year is an insane idea. Especially when you looks at the wastes of space on both sides that have done nothing but drag their feet all year long.
Anyone who voted for Obama becuase they thought he was magical and was going to be able to wrinkle his nose and fix all of America’s problems instantly is a damn fool. If more people in Washington got their priorities straight, putting the care of veterans, healthcare reform, etc. ahead of using those same topics as bullet points in their ongoing partisan “game”, we could get things done. Sadly, there aren’t nearly enough people on either side untainted enough for that to happen. The answer isn’t on the right or on the left – it’s in the middle, and we won’t get anywhere until these kids start to play nice. Like it or not, continuing doing what we’ve been doing on any of these topics, whether it’s taxes, healthcare (ESPECIALLY healthcare) or veteran care is NOT an option if anything is to improve.