How can a blogger in West Texas do more than the litany of already written books about the Bush administration’s spectacular incompetence? An Iraqi government insider joined the fray today with his release of “The Occupation of Iraq” published by Yale University Press. It details the massive corruption and widespread incompetence America imported into his country. Did you note the President’s alma mater in the publisher’s name?
Why could the simple revelation of a botched Hurricane Katrina “Lessons Learned” report on hospital evacuations cause the Bush team fits? It’s because Americans have high expectations that the sick and injured are cared for properly.
When the healthcare facilities themselves die, patients need to be rescued by capable Americans ASAP. The Bush team failed in that regard. This the nation already knows. What most people don’t know is the White House investigation doesn’t say who was responsible, how they performed, what broke down, or how to do better next time.
Did you know your local community hospital is responsible for evacuating its own patients regardless of conditions? No local, state or federal emergency operations center coordinated patient evacuations from dead hospitals in New Orleans. A trade group, the Louisiana Hospital Association worked diligently to fill the void left by the various EOC’s. This got not one mention in Bush’s booted follow-up investigation.
But who benefited the most from George Bush’s flat footed tome? It might be The Carlyle Group whose LifeCare affiliate lost 24 patients in the storms aftermath. Their complete absence from the report likely helps them defend those coming wrongful death civil lawsuits. Early legal maneuvers in criminal cases show LifeCare pointing fingers at everyone but themselves. Yet they had a duty to ensure patients were cared for by LifeCare employees only. On that they clearly failed.
Will Americans allow a President who plays politics with hospital patients lives by ignoring the Democratic governor’s plea for rescues? Can they stomach a whitewash report on hospital evacuations that abdicates the federal government of any responsibility for saving seriously ill patients both retrospectively and in the future? President Bush must know everyone has relatives who at some point in their life need hospitalization. Picture a helpless patient in a facility dead from a disaster or terrorism. Your federal government can just let them sit there. It already has and it produced an investigative report that greases the skids for it to happen again.
Does wasting money in other lands pale to wasting sick relatives here at home? If the American public finds out, they will decide...
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