The reporter has spoken to many soldiers. What reason is there to believe that he is lying? Have you any proof that he is not doing his job?
If you’re going to suggest that the reporter is lying, I propose it’s your job to prove it so.
From the article:
I’m all too familiar with military medicine from a few years back. My husband was in the Air Force, on active duty. At one base, if I had an ear infection, I was routinely told that the soonest available appointment was in 4 months or so. I had to go to the ER, and I was lucky to see a doctor in 16 hours or so. An ear infection should not require a trip to the ER. I could pull more examples out of my experiences, but the fact of the matter is that it seems that the military ALWAYS understaffs its medical teams.
Well, ok, as long as we are using personal experiences…I’ve been a consumer of military medical care for 18 years. I’ve been active duty, a dependent wife with dependent kids, and now I’m and active duty Air Force RN. We’ve lived on both Air Force and Army instillations.
Is the military medical system all it could be? Nope, sure isn’t. IS there chronic understaffing and unessescary beauracracy? Yup. Have I been frustrated sometimes? Sure have.
However, I’ve never waited more than a few hours, or had my children have to wait for more than a few hours, for an urgent condtition. For true emergencies, of which there have been mercifully few, we’ve always been immediately taken care of. There were times when it took a bit of personal consumer advocacy and assertiveness, but we never went without nessescary care.
My experiences jibe with Lynn’s. When Aaron’s had ear infections, and his own doctor was busy, and there were no other doctor’s appointments available, we had no choice but to take him to the local ER. Each ER visit cost somewhere in the neighborhood of about a grand. (Of course Tricare, the military insurance plan, never paid more than a few hundred.) This is YOUR tax money at work, y’all.
The main reason we had to go to the ER was because there are a few doctors (three that I know of) who treat babies Aaron’s age, and their appointments fill up fast. So instead of offering incentives to bring the local pediatrics practice into Tricare, they’re paying the local ER a few hundred bucks a pop for an ear infection.
Robin
UPI isn’t reputable?
He interviewed soldiers, some of whom are identified by name, rank, and unit. He provided a fair number of specific details about their medical conditions, care, and living conditions.
What part of his ‘damn job’ didn’t he do? Looks like a creditable bit of reporting to me.
OMG! Those Soldiers are getting the same treatment as other Soldiers! How awful! How horrible! Who would ever have thought that is the case?
Good grief, people. He interviewed Soldiers and he said that some of them felt they were being treated badly. I’m still waiting to see what medical appointments are unavailable for such a time period, why they’re unavailable, how emergent the need for those particular appointments are, and how often those Soldiers were referred to off-base medical establishments. Not to mention substantiation of their “feelings” as to how many such Soldiers are separated early from the military for medical conditions without receiving any benefits for same.
THAT’S the part of his damn job he didn’t do.
Perhaps the people at Ft. Stewart could have filled in some of the gaps in his story, but they weren’t talking.
You mean, like this?
Now, on to another of your comments:
Not me, that’s for sure. I would have thought it went without saying that the sick and wounded get treated differently from healthy GIs. Thanks for straightening me out on this point.
And while you sneer at the ‘feelings’ business, that’s part of the story. We’ve got a volunteer army, including the Reserves (of whom an unusual amount has been asked), and how they ‘feel’ about how they’ve been treated will surely affect re-enlistments, and may possibly affect new enlistments as well.
Generally of late, RT, I see you as a real jerk. Comments just as the one you’ve just posted are that which solidify that outlook. I never said the sick Soldiers were getting treated like healthy Soldiers you lying sack of crap.
There’s no point in simply denying that a problem could exist, Monty, especially when verification is so easy:
Where did I deny that a probelm could exist? I’m rapidly getting fed up with people saying I said shit I didn’t.
In that quote, “Those” refers to soldiers with medical conditions who weren’t getting treated, and were interviewed by the reporters. You’re more or less saying that there is no problem and the soldiers in the article are just ‘whining’, at least that’s the way it sounds from here. Maybe you meant it in a different way, but having said
and
in response to the article, it sounds a lot like you think they’re being treated just fine and dandy, when they clearly aren’t.
That doesn’t particularly bother me, Monty, coming from you.
Then WTF were you saying???
We were talking about sick and wounded soldiers. You said, “OMG! Those Soldiers are getting the same treatment as other Soldiers! How awful! How horrible! Who would ever have thought that is the case?” WTF was I supposed to think?!
It’s up to you to make it clear what you are saying. Instead, you decided to go “awww, poor babies!” rather than actually say something intelligible. You thought you could score cheap debating points with the “awww, poor babies!” approach, but instead your post was simply a heap of infantile sarcasm without any intellectual clarity.
If your posts are roadkill, don’t get mad at me when I drive over them. And if you do, don’t expect me to take you seriously.
WTF I was saying, you two fools, is that sick Soldiers on active duty are evidently being treated the same way as sick Soldiers on active duty.
Now, perhaps if you’d pull your heads out of your tushes, your mind reading would work better.
So have you changed your mind about the reporter’s “bullshit” now that the Army has confirmed the story?
I said perhaps. I said that I’m waiting for evidence, cmason. Unlike you, I’m not jumping all over the military or the administration absent evidence although I don’t particularly like the curr3ent president.
I jumped all over the evidence?
Why don’t you review this thread and see if I once said anything negative about the military, the administration or the president.
All I did was suggest you were in denial about the evidence and then asked you why you thought the reporter’s article wasn’t truthful.
Don’t put words in my mouth just because you were proven wrong.
Seems I’m not the only one who has been having trouble following Monty’s train of thought lately.
Cite?
Maybe that’s why the Pentagon is investigating.
Not sure where you said it before, but no matter. Thanks for illustrating the most basic of the three properties of an equivalence relation.
Can’t you come up with something more creative than that? If you can only insult on a fourth-grade level, why bother at all? Sheesh.