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More and more wounded and mained are coming back from Iraq. Some of them will need medical care for the rest of their lives. Will our government step up and take care of them? Link below; my emphasis.
"Former Army Major Tammy Duckworth lost both her legs in Iraq. The helicopter pilot--a major in the Illinois Army National Guard--was flying a Blackhawk over hostile territory when a rocket-propelled grenade hit her aircraft. Duckworth spent the next 13 months in hospitals and rehab centers, in a wheelchair or on prosthetic limbs, trying to relearn the skills she'd once taken for granted. "It's the very little things," that can be the hardest, she says. "It's something as mundane as trying to do your laundry. For me, it was changing the sheets on my bed. How do you do that if you have no legs?"
Duckworth is now running for Congress as a Democrat, hoping to win Henry Hyde's seat representing Chicago's western suburbs. But she's the exception: Most of the nearly 13,000 American veterans who have returned home from Afghanistan or Iraq to face life as amputees aren't doing nearly so well. With record numbers of soldiers surviving injuries that would have killed them in earlier wars, veterans' organizations are questioning whether the federal government is able--or is willing--to cope with the demand for health-care benefits, rehabilitation services and ongoing treatment. And if Washington can't do it, then who should?"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10842565/site/newsweek/
"Former Army Major Tammy Duckworth lost both her legs in Iraq. The helicopter pilot--a major in the Illinois Army National Guard--was flying a Blackhawk over hostile territory when a rocket-propelled grenade hit her aircraft. Duckworth spent the next 13 months in hospitals and rehab centers, in a wheelchair or on prosthetic limbs, trying to relearn the skills she'd once taken for granted. "It's the very little things," that can be the hardest, she says. "It's something as mundane as trying to do your laundry. For me, it was changing the sheets on my bed. How do you do that if you have no legs?"
Duckworth is now running for Congress as a Democrat, hoping to win Henry Hyde's seat representing Chicago's western suburbs. But she's the exception: Most of the nearly 13,000 American veterans who have returned home from Afghanistan or Iraq to face life as amputees aren't doing nearly so well. With record numbers of soldiers surviving injuries that would have killed them in earlier wars, veterans' organizations are questioning whether the federal government is able--or is willing--to cope with the demand for health-care benefits, rehabilitation services and ongoing treatment. And if Washington can't do it, then who should?"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10842565/site/newsweek/
