Bill Nelson: “we have had hearings this week in several of our committees on the situation at Walter Reed Army Hospital and the great…”

“we have had hearings this week in several of our committees on the situation at Walter Reed Army Hospital and the great public service that the Washington Post has done in their investigative piece bringing to light the conditions that our soldiers surely should not be in. Naturally, there is no excuse for there to be mold and leaking ceilings and pipes that do not work, and so forth. It seems to foretell a greater problem since the Post brought this to light. More people have asked questions about the delivery of health care to our wounded soldiers, sailors, marines, anyone representing the United States, particularly in service to the country. There are just too many things that keep coming up that the system is not working as it should. A major injury that we are finding coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan is traumatic brain injury, called TBI. If it is not diagnosed and treated early, then many times the effects are irreversible. Why is it that the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in an IG report last July, July of 2006, points out that in traumatic brain injury, if you are in the military compared to if you have that injury in the private sector, it takes three times as long? These are the very young men and women we are supposed to be protecting and looking out for their health because we are so appreciative of their service to this country.”