DA drops case against patient who bit nurse The Oregonian/OregonLive By Aimee Green July 2, 2018
A Northwest Portland man was injected with a sedative, then hours later bit a nurse. He faced criminal charges, until recently.(The Associated Press)
Prosecutors have dropped charges against a 35-year-old Portland man charged with assault for biting a nurse while he was heavily sedated and taken to a hospital against his will.
Advocates from the Criminal Justice Reform Clinic at Lewis and Clark Law School took up the case of Brandon Michael Gabaldon when they heard the circumstances of what happened to him.
Ambulance medics injected Gabaldon with as much as 15 times the normal dose of the sedative Versed and then took him to Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital in Northwest Portland in November 2016, said Lewis and Clark law professor Aliza Kaplan, in a friend-of-the-court brief in Gabaldon's case.
Hours later, Gabaldon woke from a deep, medicated sleep -- and after an argument broke out, Gabaldon ended up biting the nurse's elbow, according to the brief. read more here
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a former chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, issued the following statement Friday in response to reports that President-elect Donald Trump is considering privatizing the Department of Veterans Affairs:
“Privatizing the VA would be an insult to the more than 22 million veterans who risked their lives to defend our country and it would significantly lower the quality of health care they receive. Our goal, shared by The American Legion and other major veterans’ organizations, must be to improve the VA, not destroy it. When men and women put their lives on the line to defend us, the president must listen to them, not to the Koch brothers and their extreme right-wing, anti-government ideology. We will vigorously oppose any and all efforts to privatize the VA.
“The president-elect should listen to American Legion Executive Director Verna Jones, who recently said the nation’s largest veterans’ organization ‘would like the Trump administration to know that we value our Department of Veterans Affairs’ because ‘dollar-for-dollar, there is no better care or value available anywhere in the United States – period.’
“The president-elect should listen to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. ‘Politicians, pundits and politically-motivated organizations are using the national crisis in access to care at the Department of Veterans Affairs as justification to dismantle and privatize the VA health care system, with some even proposing that veterans be charged for their service-connected care. The VFW says no! Veterans must not stand idle as politicians who never served or use the VA health care system dictate when and where veterans can receive care.’
“The president-elect should listen to Paul Rieckhoff of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America who said, ‘The worst case scenario within the vets community is a total dismantling of everything they worked generations to create. There is a growing fear it is all going to get burned down.’
“The veterans’ organizations are right. We must protect the VA, not destroy it.”
You could hear the echo inside the brain of John McCain when he came up with his latest attempt to send veterans away from the care and services this nation was supposed to deliver to veterans within the VA. After all is said and not done to fix the VA, McCain's answer has always been the same. Complain about it not working then do every possible to prove he's right so he can just kill it off. Has it ever dawned on this man that as a career politician he is responsible for all the decades of leaving veterans to suffer? Bet it has but he, like all the others, won't admit it. He'd have to be pretty damn stupid to not know that. As usual McCain has a plan to take care of veterans, or so he says, however veterans noticed what he isn't saying. Sending veterans into the for profit healthcare has been his plan all along. He used to be ashamed of saying that. This is from 2008 when McCain ran for the Presidency and continued to run away from his record of failing veterans.
Yesterday, Sen. John McCain promoted his veterans private health care “plastic card” in a speech to the American Legion. Though he insisted the “card is not intended to either replace the VA or privatize veterans’ health care,” veterans groups aren’t buying it. AMVETS, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars all argue McCain’s scheme may undermine the VA. Today ThinkProgress spoke to Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, at the Democratic National Convention. When we asked him what he thought of McCain’s private health card plan, Rieckhoff slammed McCain for blocking funding for the VA:
Basically every major veterans group is opposed to it so far, so I think that pretty much says it all. We’ve got to come up with a comprehensive solution to VA health care, and that starts with VA funding. Sen. McCain has consistently voted against expansion of VA funding. So if he says the VA’s not working, it’s in part because he hasn’t funded it properly. … A lot of vets groups are going to push back against the card because it may be on the path toward privatization. So we’ve got to really make the VA as strong as it can be, and that should be our priority.
You can also read the bills for veterans McCain voted against on the above link. Just more in a series of efforts to kill off the VA instead of fixing what veterans have suffered with and all too well knowingly recorded within the brains of all veterans and families as we wait for someone with a brain to fix the VA because they care about veterans instead of trying to kill it because they only care about themselves.
Veterans could go anywhere for health care under McCain bill The Republic
William V Theobald
April 27, 2016
WASHINGTON — Arizona Sen. John McCain proposed legislation Wednesday to expand and make permanent a program allowing veterans to go anywhere for health care.
McCain’s bill, borne of frustration over the slow pace of improvements in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' system, would remove the current restriction that veterans must wait more than 30 days or live more than 40 miles from a VA facility in order to go outside the VA system for care.
His bill also would:
Allow veterans to go to walk-in clinics for minor illnesses. The VA would be required to contract with a national chain of clinics to provide the service.
Expand operating hours of VA clinics and pharmacies.
Expand telemedicine to allow VA health-care providers in one state to treat veterans in other states. read more here
Here's a message for John McCain and all other politicians out there!
Oh you're so condescending Your goal is never ending We don't want nothin', not a thing from you Your life is trite and jaded Boring and confiscated If that's your best, your best won't do (Twisted Sister)
VETERANS' PTSD -- Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital will
develop a regional post traumatic stress disorder center
whose mission will ultimately help American veterans
plagued by the experiences of war.
Phoebe to get funds for PTSD
* About 200 of the 4,700 veterans enrolled at an Albany clinic have been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, a hospital official says.
Barbara Rivera Holmes
ALBANY — Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital received Monday the mock check of a $1.6 million appropriation from Congress for the development of a regional post traumatic stress disorder center whose mission will ultimately help American veterans plagued by the experiences of war.
The hospital, which has been charged with creating and implementing a Novel Working Model for a Technological Regional Center of Excellence for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, will lead the network of researchers and caregivers responsible for amassing data on the syndrome, a mental disorder triggered by an outside event, as well as treatment outcomes. By some federal estimates, about 18 percent of war veterans have PTSD, sometimes referred to as “shell shock.” click here back to VAWatchdog for the rest of this http://www.vawatchdog.org/08/nf08/nfJAN08/nf011008-6.htm
When I first read this, I thought great idea since this is going to take everything they can shove at it to take care of our veterans. Then my stomach began to twist into knots. We are all aware of the privatizing crap Bush and his pals have been pulling off. I can't even manage to trust the man with the ability to put on two black socks on his own, so I question everything he does. I know congress did this to address the problem but as president, he should have prepared the governmental agencies for all of this. He didn't. He sold the responsibility out to the pals he owed favors to. Our troops who became wounded combat veterans have been paying the price for all of this. Now it's gotten to the point Congress has to do emergency measures to address what Bush failed to do. This is happening all over the country. "Faith based" groups are paid to pick up the slack but they have managed to hit only a fraction of the need. Most of them are into evangelizing them into their own flock instead of addressing the desperate needs they come in with. All in all this sucks for them. I can't help but think this was all part of his plan selling off the government to private industries dedicated to making a buck no matter where it came from or who had to suffer so they could get it.
