CHARLESTON, WV (WOWK) — U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) is in a fighting mood.
Capito is opposed to proposed cuts to severely limit health care at the Veterans Medical Centers in Huntington, Beckley and Clarksburg. Nationally, the VA is looking at recommendations to close the emergency rooms, and stop surgeries and in-patient care at the those facilities and others.
No final decision has been made yet, and Capito wants the process halted.
“We talked to a hospital in Huntington. I’m like, ‘Can you take the surgeries and emergency room calls that now the VA in Huntington is no longer going to do?’ And he goes, ‘I don’t know that we have that capacity.’ Well isn’t that a conversation you would have before you recommend you would close these things?” said Capito.
On another matter, Capito says there has been some progress made toward installing security cameras in all public spaces of the VA hospital in Clarksburg. That came about after an unlicensed nurse’s aide illegally injected at least eight veterans with insulin, and it killed them. She got life in prison.