The Star Tribune reports on a visit Congressman Walz took today to the Minneapolis Veterans Medical Center. In ten years, the center's caseload has increased from 38,000 cases annually to 75,000, and it's getting ready to serve returning Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans.
Walz asks what the center needs:
A retired National Guard command sergeant major elected in November, Walz said health care for veterans should have been planned better before the Iraq invasion.
He didn't reiterate his view that Minnesota VA hospitals are "taxed to their limit," but asked what the hospital needs. For now, hospital officials said, the $400 million annual budget is adequate. The hospital typically sees new patients within 35 days -- and immediately in urgent cases.
Walz contrasted the Minneapolis VA Hospital with the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and with conditions at other facilities that were laid out in congressional hearings last week.
At one, a veteran had to wheel himself 300 yards to a mess hall that he found closed, Walz said. At Walter Reed, in suburban Washington and the nation's highest-profile military hospital, Walz found crowded conditions, lines for services and, on the day he visited, a fire alarm that rang "by mistake" for an hour.
"You just don't get any better than what we have in Minneapolis," Walz said in a meeting with some of the Minneapolis center's top officials.
There's more, including a moving meeting with an injured Marine and his mother.
Rochester Post Bulletin: Lawmaker Demmer will run for Congress
The candidates looking for the GOP endorsement for the First CD tussle over who is most conservative the Post Bulletin reports in its coverage of the Olmsted Convention Republican Convention. No wonder Senator Coleman was in town.
Get the popcorn.
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