Walter Reed Medical Center

Floor Speech

WALTER REED MEDICAL CENTER

* Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has placed a spotlight on our entire military and veteran health care system. That is a good thing because the system is in need of a thorough reorganization. As a result of cuts in VA health care, more than a quarter of a million vets were refused enrollment in 2005 alone because they ``didn't qualify''. How many of these men and women were told when they reported for duty that they may or may not ``qualify'' for veteran's care after separation?

* Mr. Speaker, I do not accept the notion that America's promise to its veterans is subject to later, arbitrary qualifications, but that quarter of a million veterans is the number we know of. Perhaps even more insidious are those vets who because of their PTSD or other injuries were discharged with less than honorable discharges most of the time with no hearing, no review. These men and women now reside in a kind of abyss between earth and hell. They have served their nation but their nation has turned its collective backs on them.

* Mr. Speaker, we need to recall Vietnam Vet Jim Hopkins who finally drove his Jeep into the lobby of the Wadsworth VA Hospital out of frustration and protest in 1981. Jim Hopkins didn't get the treatment he needed and couldn't get anyone in the VA or the administration to listen to him. His subsequent tragic death led to a fifty-three day hunger strike by vets and finally shed some national light on our refusal to acknowledge the reality of PTSD and the impact of dioxin on the human nervous system. Now, a quarter of a century later there are many more frustrated vets, men and women who responded when their nation called, men and women who we have promised lifetime medical care in return who are shut out of the VA system. Men and women have been kicked to the curb, unseen and unserved. Mr. Speaker, the hour and day have come: it is time for this Congress, in turn, to kick open the doors of the VA system--to ensure that every veteran, every veteran, has received his or her due for their service.

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