• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Bush Names Seven to Veteran Care Panel

Posted on: Friday, 9 March 2007, 21:00 CST

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Friday named seven more members to the commission investigating the treatment of wounded veterans. Bush has ordered a comprehensive review of conditions at military and veterans hospitals, which have been overwhelmed by injured troops from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The review comes after disclosures of shoddy outpatient health care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

The seven new members join the commission's co-chairs, former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., and former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. They are:

-Marc Giammatteo, a former U.S. Army captain whose leg was severely injured during an attack in Iraq. He has undergone more than 30 surgeries at Walter Reed.

-Jose Ramos, a student at George Mason University. While in the Navy, he treated soldiers injured in Iraq. In 2004, during his second tour of duty in Iraq, he lost an arm in combat.

-Tammy Edwards, a research assistant at the Geneva Foundation. In 2005, her husband, a U.S. Army staff sergeant, was severely burned in Iraq when a 500-pound bomb exploded under his vehicle.

-Kenneth Fisher, chairman of the Fisher House Foundation, a nonprofit that builds "comfort homes" for families of hospitalized veterans.

-C. Martin Harris, a physician who has served on other government and private commissions that have examined health care problems.

-Edward Eckenhoff, a leader in rehabilitation medicine and president of the National Rehabilitation Hospital.

-Gail Wilensky, an economist and senior fellow at Project HOPE, an international health education foundation.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

More News in this Category