Freshman Democrats Ask for Investigation of Veterans’ Health Care
Hodes
New Hampshire Union Leader
Greg Hellman
Boston University Washington News Service
3/05/07
WASHINGTON, March 5—New Hampshire Rep. Paul Hodes, president of the freshman class of House Democrats, has asked the investigative arm of Congress to conduct an independent investigation of veterans’ health care in a letter signed by all 42 new Democratic House members and one freshman Republican.
The letter to the Government Accountability Office, dated March 1, calls the dilapidated conditions of Building 18 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center—first reported by The Washington Post in a series revealing mold, crumbling walls and inadequate outpatient care—indicative of a broader failure by the Army and the Bush administration to provide necessary care for injured veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The situation in Building 18 is a clear indicator of a systemic failure in the delivery of quality outpatient healthcare and services to those who have bravely served our country,” the letter to Comptroller General David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office, said. “We are concerned that this failure might be the tip of the iceberg in terms of a lack of readiness for the significant needs of our returning veterans, particularly in the context of the Administration’s proposed out-year reductions in the budget for the Veteran’s Administration.”
While Hodes pointed much of his criticism at hospital officials, he also said the administration bears ultimate responsibility for larger failures in veterans’ health care around the country.
“It begins at the very top,” he said in a telephone interview after the hearing. “We’re involved in an operation that puts our troops in a civil war and they’re being deployed without adequate equipment. We have a system that is better suited to treating World War II injuries.”
In light of such failures, a House subcommittee held a hearing at Walter Reed Monday and grilled Army officers previously in charge of the hospital.
“I want you to know that I think this is a massive failure of competence, management and command,” Hodes, a member of the subcommittee, told Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, surgeon general of the Army, who testified at the hearing.
Kiley apologized for conditions of building 18 but also said Walter Reed overall provides good facilities and patient care.
“The housing conditions here in Walter Reed clearly have not met our standards and for that I am personally and professionally sorry,” he said. “But we have great facilities. My concern is that building 18 has become emblematic.”
Hodes called Kiley’s defense of the hospital “appalling” and questioned why he would be reappointed as head of the hospital. Kiley had been head of Walter Reed until 2004 and was named interim head last week after Maj. Gen. George Weightman was fired.
“I was appalled by General Kiley’s testimony and I’m appalled that he’s still surgeon general of the Army,” Hodes said. “Amazingly General Kiley said that they were not prepared for injuries they have seen for the past five years. [There was a] stunning refusal to acknowledge that real systemic problems have existed at Walter Reed for a long time.”
The hearing Monday by the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was the first as the committee begins an investigation of the quality of veteran’s health care around the country.
Witnesses who appeared before the committee—including patients Army Staff Sgt. Daniel Shannon and Army Cpl. Wendell McLeod and McLeod’s wife Annette McLeod—testified to the squalid conditions in which patients in building 18 were forced to live.
“The treatment they gave him, a dog wouldn’t deserve it,” Annette McLeod said of the care provided for her husband. “This is about accountability. I just want them to fix the problem.”
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