The President is at the Military Ball. This reminds me of a dream I have had for a while .....

[Stinky The Clown]

.... many new VA hospitals. I am aware of one new one in Florida, one almost done in Las Vegas, and one being planned for New Orleans. The rest of them are inadequate to task and/or just plain old and worn out.

The VA staff do the best they can. I have met them. They really do care.

All they need is support.

And new, state of the art facilities. They need them badly. I hope there's a few bucks in the stimulus package to build these.

And lets also lift the means test that the VA has in place. The compact was made with **every** vet. Those of us who don't need it won't take it, honest we won't. But we damned sure deserve to be **able** to use it. To say nothing of that fact that one who doesn't need it now may need it any time some employer decides to cut us off.

The VA is sacred.

[MadMaddie]

1. Agreed! VA hospitals and facilities should be on the list of

new projects in the next year or so.

[Glorfindel]

2. I gave up on the VA

Maybe "they really do care," but I never saw any evidence of it. The facilities are inadequate, inconvenient, and veterans (at least from my personal experience and observation) are treated like ignorant cattle. Fortunately, I don't have to use the VA's medical services. I'm very sorry that there are those who must, and I hope for their sakes that improvement is immediate and massive. I thought President Obama's notion of every veteran's having a health care card (similar to Medicare) was a great idea.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. Consider this .......

I was part of the planning team involved in the new Las Vegas VA hospital. It has a mere 90 beds. As hospitals go, that's tiny. But they handle in excess of 3,000 patients a day, every day.

3,000.

That's unfortunate. It speaks to the inadequacy of the system to meet the demand. The new facility is designed to handle that volume. The old facility wasn't even a real facility. They shared space in an Air Force operation at Nellis .... that was overtaxed before they even got there.

Walter Reed, while active duty Army, is painfully typical of the care our vets get. The staff really do care. The physical plant is WORN THE FUCK OUT.