Behind the Walter Reed scandal

Yup, it's the usual suspects again. From the Miami Sun-Sentinel:

For those too horrified to read the details, here's a snapshot of the administration's greatest domestic disaster since Katrina.

It starts with brutally substandard care and abandonment of tens of thousands of veterans, not just at Walter Reed, but at VA hospitals and clinics around the country, as The Washington Post has revealed in ghastly detail.

Second, starving veterans' care. Since 2001, federal allocations for veterans' medical care lag behind overall health care spending, rather stunning when you consider we have sent 1.5 million of our young men and women to Iraq and Afghanistan and over 184,000 have sought VA care after serving.

Due to funding cuts, some 263,257 veterans were denied enrollment for Veterans Administration health coverage in 2005. Enrollment has been suspended for those deemed not having service-related injuries or illnesses.

The final piece is privatization. As the Army Times notes, Walter Reed handed a five-year $120 million contract to a private company run by an ex-Halliburton executive. The contracting out of support services was followed by a mass exodus of support personnel, one reason for the shoddy care.

If you think this is an aberration, look at other ways our healthcare safety net is being dismantled.

But, hey, you happy Bush supporters out there, I guess you don't really need to worry about that. Just slap another "Support the Troops!" bumpersticker on your 12 mpg Hummer and keep careening down the highway, flipping your middle finger at everyone and braying that libruls don't "support the troops" because they "hate America." After all, it's not as if you'll ever end up in a veterans' hospital.