Hurricane Katrina Veterans must travel all over the South for Healthcare

[Monkeyman]

If the bone fusion in Paul Herrmann's spine had disintegrated the summer before Hurricane Katrina, he would have a short drive from his home in Slidell to the veterans hospital in downtown New Orleans to have it resealed.

But Hermann needed surgery the summer after the storm, and the hospital had been closed for nearly a year. His case file was shipped to the veterans hospital in Jackson Miss., where doctors tarried over it for two months before arranging for him to have the surgery -- in Houston.

Hermann's ordeal is all too common these days. While the Department of Veterans Affairs makes plans to build a new hospital to replace the one lost to Katrina, retired military men and women-- many of them aging and frail,some of them with limited incomes -- have had to travel all over the South for medical care that was once available at their doorstep. Worst all all, the delays frequently worsen the conditions that need treatment. Cancers can spread or heart attacks recur.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1175405737140920.xml&coll=1

[annabanana]

1. There are so many better way to spend America's resources

than in Baghdad's streets. I find the lack of attention to the Gulf Coast morally reprehensible.

[Olney Blue]

2. Not acceptable. It's not just Walter Reed vets who need help!

[nam78_two]

K&R.nt

[nam78_two]

3. K&R.nt

[WinkyDink]

4. OMG. Yet ANOTHER FRICKIN' EVIL from Bush!! There is no end to it.

[Monkeyman]

5. Yep

[pitohui]

6. it will be a long time before we have adequate hospital services for anyone

i honestly don't understand why someone who is in poor health and in need of medical services should be encouraged to remain in or return to new orleans

give the vets sufficient money to relocate where they can get care, seems pretty simple to me

the times-picayune (local paper) has published a series stating that within 10 years, new orleans will be an island, with water lapping right up to the levees

this is not a safe or proper place to be encouraging older, fragile people to live, a retiree can live anywhere given sufficient funds to relocate, this is what we need to be looking at now

this atlantic hurricane cycle could last another 40 years, and the levees/floodwalls are clearly inadequate to deal with the situation

building hospitals is a major project, it could very well be by the time they're rebuilt, it will be just in time to be knocked down again

anyone who *can* get out should frankly, it ain't gonna get any better any time soon