Health Care News & Discussion
Veterans Hospitals
Written by:
Del Meyer
06/04/2001 2:27 PM
Here’s an interesting and true story I know you will enjoy.
Joel D Wallach, DVM, MD, nominee for the 1991 Nobel Prize in Medicine, mentioned in an address that hundreds of thousands of patients lose their lives unnecessarily in hospitals. He then stated that we have two “opportunities” to give our lives for our country – once on the battlefield and once in a [government] VA hospital.
He wasn’t kidding. A VA doctor tells the true story. One day during rounds, the nursing assistant complained that a patient was not swallowing. The food just keeps running down his mouth onto his shirt. The doctor looked closely at the patient and noted that he was dead.
Now isn’t that something. Not only can you give your life in the VA hospital, but after you’ve given your life, the staff doesn’t even know that you’re dead.
As is well known, the government itself is a welfare system. It is the only employer that can employ the totally incompetent.
Or from another angle, while we’re debating physician-assisted suicide, why don’t we just allow people to get admitted to a VA hospital who want to die. Then nobody will know the difference.