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The Wounded Warrior Commission released its recommendations for improvements in the healthcare provision for disabled combat casualties. CBS and ABC both led with the presentation of the report, Serve, Support, Simplify, at the White House, where ABC's former anchor Bob Woodruff was formally recognized by President George Bush. Woodruff was wounded while covering the war in Iraq and was treated by the very military healthcare systems whose required improvements he was covering. NBC's lead was a follow-up to its revelations of the oddball confiscations from airline passengers that inspired a security alert for TSA screeners.

The current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have exposed the military healthcare system as "understaffed, underfunded and under pressure from an unexpected flow of severely injured troops," ABC's Woodruff stated, while CBS' Jim Axelrod explained why: "With hi-tech advances in battlefield triage, more seriously-wounded vets are surviving than ever before." And NBC's Jim Miklaszewski zeroed in on the panel's calls for an aggressive focus on PTSD and TBI--post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries--"caused by the blasts from roadside bombs, injuries critics claim have been widely neglected." ABC's Woodruff ticked off other key recommendations--personalized recovery plans, a Family Leave Act extension to cover military kin, a centralized information Website--yet remained skeptical. He called the report "just the latest in a long list of similar reports that have not fixed the problem," counting eleven commissions in the last half century.

To give us a human interest angle on the issue, CBS' David Martin filed an American Heroes feature on Marissa, the wife of Sgt Jarod Behee. She rejected plans by the Veterans Administration to put her grievously brain damaged husband into a nursing home and found Casa Colina, a privately-owned rehabilitation center in Pomona Cal, instead. The therapy improved his condition enough that he can now walk and work. Now the "squeaky wheel," as Martin called her, has told her story online and her Website is the inspiration for other wives of disabled veterans seeking to improve on what the VA has to offer.

Andrew Tyndall 8/5/07 4:19:50 am

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