Inside/Outside

I was listening to Fresh Air yesterday and heard an interview with Dr. Richard Jadick, a Navy medical officer that won a Bronze star for his innovation of bringing the medicine to the wounded soldier instead of the other way around. When I heard the words, Camp Lejeune and Hospital Corpsman, I was immediately hooked and had to hear the whole story. Afterwards, I couldn’t help but compare this story to the recent one about the abuses at Walter Reed Army hospital. Not that Navy hospitals are any better than Army hospitals…they aren’t. As a former Hospital Corpsman at the Naval Hospital at Camp Lejeune, I have a pretty good feel for the situation at military hospitals. For one thing, they are run by the government and that means that they will always look good in a superficial way. It’s only when you dig a little that you see that it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.

There is a lot of posturing going on right now with politicians making grand promises that they will right the wrongs at the hospital. But I can safely predict that in 10 years from now, or less, their words will be forgotten and the same conditions will exist once more. It’s government and that is how it works. Always has, always will.

Dr. Jadick worked "outside" of government rules and regulations and that was why he was successful and saved lives...