Want Gov't Health Care? Try Walter Reed Army Hosp.

Socialists who are just honest-to God ignorant (as opposed to the ones who know better and just don't care) wonder how I can be so opposed to socialized medicine and greater government involvement in government health care.

Well, read up on the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal and you'll have a clue. I was in the Air Force for 10 years, with three of those years stationed in England (where they have a National Health Service), so I know a little about government run health care first hand.

From Terence Jeffrey's Townhall column today

From the start, this government health-care system has mishandled his outpatient care. It discharged him from the hospital when he was still disoriented, giving him a 'photocopied map' so he could find his way alone -- on stumbling feet -- to the hotel. It let him sit idly in his room for two weeks because his case manager could not locate him. It forced him to file masses of paperwork. (Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull, who broke the story about Shannon and the mismanagement of outpatient care at Walter Reed, reported that soldiers moving through the process are required to fill out 22 different documents filed with eight different commands.)


After a number of months, Shannon testified, Walter Reed had to restart his MEB process because it lost his paperwork. This January, he was told his MEB and PEB needed to be suspended until he finally undergoes the plastic surgery he needs and is fitted with a prosthetic eye.

It is as if he were in a time machine that keeps taking him back to the start of his ordeal. 'I'm hearing the same things about the process that I heard when I first began two years ago,' he said.

I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceberg, too. There are probably countless military men and women with stories like this, perhaps some that make this one pale in comparison.

If you truly knew what government health care had in store, even the notion of it being "free" wouldn't be enough to keep you from running the other way as fast as you could.