Wednesday, April 14, 2004
In the Northwest: Closing VA hospital would be a
tragic irony of war
By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
WALLA WALLA -- Does it make sense, as body bags and wounded bodies
come home from Iraq, for the federal government to close a hospital that serves
thousands of veterans over a vast three-state area?
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Principi is within days of accepting or rejecting the
recommendation of a commission -- curiously entitled CARES -- to end more than 80 years of
operation at the Jonathan M. Wainwright Memorial Veterans Affairs Medical Center here.
Veterans groups are up in arms, fearing the loss of treatment and the tyranny of distance in seeking
to replace it.
The fate of the Eastern Washington veterans hospital -- it treated 11,800 vets last year -- has become
a not-inconsiderable embarrassment to the Bush administration.
Walla Walla is in the district of Republican Rep. George Nethercutt, recruited last year by the White
House to challenge Democratic Sen. Patty Murray.
In turn, Murray has used her clout as a senior member of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs
to become the hospital's most tenacious defender and advocate. She was chairwoman of a Monday
field hearing here that drew 450 people.
The preponderant evidence is that shutting the Wainwright Center is a lousy idea. It's also a classic
case of bean counters in Washington, D.C., showing ignorance toward conditions in this
Washington.
After a tour hastily arranged by Nethercutt last week, acting Veterans Affairs Undersecretary Dr.
Jonathan Perlin said, "We are absolutely not going to cut care to any veteran." He pledged that
alternatives for care will be in place before doors to the hospital are shut.
Huh? What alternatives?
"The demand for psychiatric care
would not be able to be handled by
the system now in place here,"
Morre Dean, president of Adventist
Hospital in Walla Walla, warned the
Monday hearing.
About 13,000 veterans live in
northeast Oregon, of whom 4,000
have sought health care under the
Veterans Affairs medical system, 70
percent at Walla Walla, according to
figures compiled by Sen. Ron
Wyden, D-Ore.
Where would they go? One hundred
sixty miles to Spokane, 250 miles to
Portland or 300 or more miles to
Seattle, according to Jim Willis,
director of Oregon's Department of
Veterans Affairs.
"Often people living on the Eastern Seaboard who make these decisions do not understand the
distances involved," Willis told Murray's hearing.
Murray sought to put some flesh on Perlin's promises.
"Can you tell us where outpatient care would move to?" she asked Dr. Leslie Burger, the
Vancouver, Wash.-based regional director of health care for Veterans Affairs.
Burger spoke of the possibility of public-private sector partnerships and the future of ambulatory
care. "Whether on this site or in this community has yet to be determined," he told Murray.
The senator persisted. "But there are not funds in the federal budget or in VA plans for this
purpose," she told Burger.
"That is correct, ma'am," he replied. "The proposal is still a preliminary one."
Murray turned to mental health, a field in which the Wainwright Center has earned a high
reputation. "Same question for long-term health care," she said. "Are there any plans to build a
facility here?"
"Not at this time, ma'am," Burger replied.
Such answers haven't reassured veterans.
"Veterans will be asked to give up a needed service not available in the local community: It is
deplorable to a population of people who need care to be asked to give up something near and dear
for something far away," said Gary Pearson, president of the Northwest chapter of Paralyzed
Veterans of America.
Ron Fry of Walla Walla, commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars department of this state, lined
up 11 bottles of pills that he takes for post-traumatic stress syndrome.
"My mental-health doctors are absolutely essential to my being able to carry on each day," Fry said.
The Wainwright Center is old. "No major construction has taken place at this facility for more than
30 years," said Jim Kuntz, executive director of the Port of Walla Walla.
OK, so the center looks as spare as its namesake. Jonathan Wainwright was the U.S. commander
who surrendered the Philippines in 1942 (after Gen. Douglas MacArthur escaped to Australia) and
emerged gaunt from three years in a Japanese prison camp.
But a hospital's reputation rests with the people who work there. Despite its aged facilities, the
Wainwright Center gets few of the complaints that have bedeviled the VA's health care system
across the country.
Quite the contrary, it has been a mainstay -- providing 300 jobs and a $20 million-plus payroll -- to
a stable community with a sense of community.
At one point Monday, Burger said it would cost around $28 million to get all the old buildings up to
code, meeting needs that range from removing lead to installing seismic improvements.
"Can you tell us what would be the cost of contracting out all the inpatient and outpatient services?"
asked Murray, a bulldog on this day.
The VA couldn't. No such estimates have come from the Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced
Services Commission (CARES), which has recommended the closure.
In the upcoming Senate race, Murray is sure to get hit for voting against the $87 billion Iraq
occupation package, which included about $10 billion to rebuild the ravaged country.
We hear daily the upbeat reports of U.S. occupation authorities on the reopening of hospitals and
the construction and supply of medical clinics across Iraq.
Fine! Why aren't we able to invest in an American hospital that serves an area that is home to
67,000 veterans? And the number is increasing.
About 4,500 soldiers and reservists from Eastern Washington will see service in Iraq, 1,000 from
eastern Oregon, according to estimates supplied by the VFW.
Nethercutt had an aide filming Monday's oft-emotional hearing. I suggest he take the tape to his
next big fund-raiser and hand it to Dick Cheney or Karl Rove.
P-I columnist Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or
joelconnelly@seattlepi.com |
