The First Punch

Sites for veterans' hospitals have long been picked by pork-barrel politics. Of the 97 hospitals now in operation, 52 are in small towns where there are often short ages of good doctors, attendants, dietitians. Aware of this, Four-Star General Omar Nelson Bradley came to a sharp decision when he took over the Veterans Administration: hospitals would henceforth be built near big city medical schools. Last week Oklahoma's windy Democratic Senator Elmer Thomas fired the first gun to scare Omar Bradley off such ideas.

The Senator called in reporters, baldly announced that he had sent General Brad ley a "virtual ultimatum" to take over a 750-bed Army hospital in Okmulgee, a small Oklahoma oil town. The hospital is not fireproof, and it is within 37 miles of another Veterans' Hospital (prewar, pork-barrel style) in another small town, Muskogee. VA plans call for a new 1,000-bed building in Oklahoma City. But the Senator was looking for a fight. "If the VA does not take this hospital over," he said, "I will ask why when they come before the Senate for more money. ..."

General Bradley replied to the challenge in language any Senator could understand. Said he: "If appropriations are not voted for veterans it will be very clear indeed who didn't vote them. . . ."*

* For news of VA v. private pork, see BUSINESS.

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