Walter Reed Army Medical Center Scandal

it's quite a boring day here at the office.

after hearing last night about the walter reed scandal i decided to read up on it, and what better time to read than on company time


spent about an hour browsing a bunch of articles, i tried to grab the best info i could out of each to give an idea of what's going on here.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0307/p01s01-usmi.html

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http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1596681,00.html

When a potato becomes too hot to handle, Presidents like to appoint commissions. Never mind that the taxpayers are paying tens of billions of dollars annually to run military and veterans' health care, and that we elected lawmakers to make sure that the job is being done (and that the lawmakers, in turn, have created the Government Accountability Office to help them out, with its 3,000 employees and a $500 million annual budget).

Even as the war generates more tenants for Walter Reed and other military hospitals, its $1 billion a week cost has sucked money out of stateside garrisons and hospitals. Last year, the Army had to trim spending by more than $500 million for posts at home and abroad to help pay for the war. That sounds like a lot of money. But it's really just a rounding error at the Pentagon. After the Bush White House said last month it would need $93.4 billion to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of September, Administration and congressional aides now say the White House will seek an additional $2 billion. That could buy a lot of paint and d-Con.

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http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2007/02/21/walter_reed/index.html?source=rss

In early 2005, Salon brought to the attention of Walter Reed officials disturbing information based on interviews, medical records and other Army documents which showed that soldiers receiving outpatient treatment for mental wounds were suffering from a shocking pattern of neglect. At that time, Walter Reed officials refused to discuss Salon's findings. Instead, they issued a statement saying it just wasn't so: "We are satisfied that there is a very high level of patient satisfaction with their treatment," the statement read.

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http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/02/18/walter_reed/index.html

But less than a month after leaving Puerto Rico, on Jan. 12, 2004, Soto-Ramirez was found dead, hanging in Ward 54. Army buddies who visited him in the days before his death said Soto-Ramirez was increasingly angry and despondent. "He was real upset with the treatment he was getting," said René Negron, a former Walter Reed psychiatric patient and a friend of Soto-Ramirez's. "He said: 'These people are giving me the runaround ... These people think I'm crazy, and I'm not crazy, Negron. I'm getting more crazy being up here.'

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http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/03/06/6krugman_edit.html

For all its cries of "support the troops," the Bush administration has treated veterans' medical care the same way it treats everything else: nickel-and-diming the needy, protecting the incompetent, and privatizing everything it can.

What makes this a particular shame is that in the Clinton years, veterans' health care - like the Federal Emergency Management Agency - became a shining example of how good leadership can revitalize a troubled government program.

To save money, the administration has been charging veterans for many formerly free services. For example, in 2005, Salon reported that some Walter Reed patients were forced to pay hundreds of dollars each month for their meals. More important, the administration has broken longstanding promises of lifetime health care to those who defend our nation. Two months before the invasion of Iraq, the VHA, which previously offered care to all veterans, introduced severe new restrictions on who is entitled to enroll in its health care system.

So when you hear stories of veterans who spend months or years fighting to get the care they deserve, trying to prove that their injuries are service-related, remember this: all this red tape was created not by the inherent inefficiency of government bureaucracy, but by the Bush administration's penny-pinching.

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http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/03/walter_reed_dis.html

In January of last year, the U.S. Army awarded a support contract to IAP Worldwide Services, a well connected contractor whose CEO, Al Neffgen, is a former executive at Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Under the $120 million deal, IAP is to provide administrative, managerial and operational support services at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., through 2011.

the company reportedly had difficulty fulfilling an earlier contract to deliver ice to Hurricane Katrina victims

Garibaldi complained that the outsourcing deal with IAP was causing an exodus "of highly skilled and experienced personnel" at Walter Reed.



Aside from Al Neffgen, we have David Warhol and Craig Peterson representing Halliburton on the IAP board of directors.

David Warhol is the former Director for Americas Region Staffing and Resource Development for all Halliburton Companies


and is now

Vice President of Human Resources for IAP Worldwide Services.

Craig Peterson is the former Vice President of Contingency and Homeland Operations for Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton.

and is now

Senior Vice President, Major Operations




Discuss your feelings on the situation.

 

yeah, i work for a lawyer.

pretty easy going guy, and the work is pretty simple.

 

what position do you mean?

my job?

 

we create terrorism.