Constitutional Conservative: George P. Bush failures in overseeing Texas state-run nursing homes for veterans result in scores of preventable deaths.
Analysis:
George P. Bush, Texas’ Land Commissioner, oversees state-run nursing homes for our veterans. Bush’s leadership failures extend beyond the Alamo and Houston’s hurricane clean-up: he failed Texas’ veterans.
As the media reported, if you were in a nursing home for veterans overseen by Bush during the Covid crisis, you were more than twice as likely to die from Covid than similarly situated seniors:
- “Texas’ state-run veterans’ homes had more than double the death rate among COVID-19- infected residents compared with other nursing homes in the state.
- Seven of the homes had a fatality rate of 25% or more — far higher than the statewide average — 11% — among Texas nursing homes.
- All told, nearly 570 veterans home residents tested positive for COVID-19 in Texas and nearly a quarter of them, 134, died. Floresville Mayor Cecelia Gonzalez-Dippel blamed the Bush-led Veterans Land Board for failing to follow up on complaints and to ensure that residents received proper treatment.
- “It makes me angry, you know. Yes, angry at COVID. But also angry at ‘how did this happen?’” Gonzalez-Dippel said in a January interview. “I can’t go and investigate [the veterans home] myself. I’m leaning on the Land [Board] to do everything they can to take care of all of the residents.””
Conclusion:
The failures of leadership by George P. Bush: the Alamo disaster, the Hurricane funding debacle in which he failed to award even a dollar to Houston/Harris County, and now leaving veterans vulnerable and indeed watching them die at more than twice the rate of similarly situated seniors is shocking. This is harm too great.
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