The Walter Reed Experience Reduplicated

The recent murderous attack by a 3rd Iraq deployment Sergeant prompted me to think back two years to the Walter Reed Hospital scandal, in which brain injured, severely wounded and post-traumatic stress disordered personnel were lodged in horrible facilities and provided with back-ward care (click on title for Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility by Dana Priest and Anne Hull,
Washington Post Staff Writers, Sunday, February 18, 2007; Page A01). If this was the care that an arrogant neglectful Congress and our politician-led armed forces provided to men and women who were willing to give their lives and limbs on behalf of their country, should we stop a consider whether we should have a universal health system, controlled at the top by our federal government and its bureaucracy?

Unless we have a moral and ethical framework, upon which our proposed federal health reform is built and contained, we will be duplicating and expanding the philosophy and conditions which led to the uncaring and inhumane Walter Reed Hospital experience. If health care is the domain of hospital administrators, insurance company executives, nursing home operatives, pharmaceutical manufacturers and sales people, we will not have a humane, appropriate and ethical health care system.

Mr. Obama, I would rather hear that you were meeting with persons on the front lines of patient care, and ethicists, than with health industry related major political donors. Those who have the daily responsibility for patients' well being, and ethicists, can tell us what we need to do to build a great health system. The industry people will tell us to build a system that will be good for them.