[DEBATE] : (Fwd) A healthcare PPP defeats US army's top gun

[Patrick Bond]

(Spotted by Jim Devine on the PEN-L list. Privatisation and outsourcing 
of SA hospitals has been on the agenda since a World Bank mission made 
major recommendations which I've not yet had a chance to peruse. Anyone 
know anything about it? Has anyone on this list - I assume we're nearly 
all petit-bourgeois but stand to be corrected - actually been admitted 
to an SA public hospital?! My occasional visits have not been uplifting.)

from Juan Cole:
 > Army Secretary Forced to Resign
Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey was forced to resign Friday over
the scandal of substandard conditions at a wing of Walter Reed
Hospital. Note that all the time Donald Rumsfeld was in office, and
despite horrible errors, no one ever had to resign, least of all --
until the Dems won Congress -- Rumsfeld himself. Over the Abu Ghraib
torture scandal, Rumsfeld had said that to throw someone overboard in
propitiation was not the way we did things in America (i.e. no one
would be punished). Robert Gates is to be applauded for restoring the
idea of accountability to Washington.

But everyone should pay attention especially to this para. in the WaPo 
report:

   ' The committee also released an internal Army memorandum
reportedly written in September in which the Walter Reed garrison
commander, Col. Peter Garibaldi, warned Weightman that "patient care
services are at risk of mission failure" because of staff shortages
brought on by privatization of the support work force at the hospital.'

The privatization of patient care services is responsible for a lot of
the problem here. And so is the privatization of services for US
troops in Iraq punishing them. Indeed, the privatization of guard
duties through the hiring of firms like Blackwater caused all that
trouble at Falluja in the first place. KRB never delivered services to
US troops with the speed and efficiency they deserved. The Bush-Cheney
regime rewarded civilian firms with billions while they paid US GIs a
pittance to risk their lives for their country. And then when they
were wounded they were sent someplace with black mold on the walls. A
full investigation into the full meaning of 'privatization' at the
Pentagon for our troops would unconver epochal scandals.