be in general hospitals where the ratio of personnel to patients is high.

Mr. MEADE. In general hospitals, there is a smaller proportion of cases that are service connected?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes, sir; very much so.

Mr. MEADE. TB's and psychos are mostly all service connected? Dr. HAWLEY. The NP's are 40 percent service connected; the TB are 45 percent service connected, and the general medical and surgical cases are roughly 20 percent service connected.

Mr. MEADE. Thank you.

Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Huber.

Mr. HUBER. I want to say that having visited and inspected hospitals throughout the northeastern section of the United States during the Seventy-ninth Congress, that I am very greatly pleased with the strides that have been made. I want to commend General Hawley very highly for his efforts in that direction.

I want to ask one question: How do you feel the care that the average veteran receives in the veterans' hospitals compares with private hospital care?

Dr. HAWLEY. I am by no means satisfied with the standard of care given in all of our hospitals. In at least one-half of our hospitals today, there is no finer medical care anywhere in the world, and taking it by and large, with all of our hospitals, it is my considered opinion that the veteran is getting a standard of medical care in our hospitals significantly higher than that of the general public.

Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Vail?

Mr. VAIL. I have no questions.
Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Price?
Mr. PRICE. No questions.
Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Meyer?
Mr. MEYER. No questions.
Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Teague?
Mr. TEAGUE. No questions.
Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Mitchell?
Mr. MITCHELL. Yes.

Mr. Chairman, I get a bit fed up with all these bouquets being thrown around at Veterans' Administration.

Mr. KEARNEY. Let us conduct the hearing so that the gentleman who is now testifying will feel that, after all, it is constructive criticism we are offering.

Mr. MITCHELL. The thing that I am trying to get at, Mr. Chairman, is to get some answers here. I do not think we are going to get them if we start throwing a lot of flowers around as to whether the patients in the hospitals are getting taken care of. The patients that are not in the hospitals are the ones I am worried about, the ones who are trying to get in. There seems to be something wrong some place because I have had the same complaints that the gentleman from Oklahoma has had and I have no doubt in my mind that the patients already in these hospitals are being well taken care of but certainly there are a lot of people that should be in these hospitals that are not getting into them and when you start closing a 1,500-bed hospital, on July 1 of 1947, in anticipation of opening two 200-bed hospitals in 1950, I am wondering what is going to happen to the people that are going to need care in that district.

Are they going to go to Hines and fill up those 600 empty beds?

Where are they going to go?

I would like some answers here, instead of so many bouquets.
I am certainly not satisfied.

Mr. HUBER. May I inquire, have you received any complaints, Mr. Mitchell, from men in your area who are denied hospitalization? Mr. MITCHELL. Surely, I have had complaints. That is exactly what I am talking about.

Mr. HUBER. I have not had.

Mr. MITCHELL. Well, I have.

We hear from the Veterans' Administration that they are taking good care of all their patients, there is no one being denied hospitalization, and yet we hear from the veterans' organizations, nonprofit organizations, that are working in many cases for nothing, that they are having all kinds of turn-downs. I am getting a little tired of listening to all this stuff myself.

Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. Mitchell, on April 30 there were 500 available beds at Fort Benjamin Harrison and 369 patients, and I, too, am unable to understand how a veteran in the State of Indiana requiring hospitalization does not get it.

Mr. MITCHELL. I am wondering if what Mr. Johnson said about the Administrator's telling these service officers of the various service organizations not to send any more patients there but to put a stop to it should not be considered.

Mr. TEAGUE. Do you have specific names that you can turn over to the general so he can check up on it?

Mr. MITCHELL. I have already given him one to work on now.
Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Johnson.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. I would just like to make this statement, in more or less answer to what the gentleman from Mississippi said. Certainly these complaints that I have been getting are not coming from any psychiatric patients. Mine are coming from State commanders of the American Legion in Oklahoma, the State commander of the VFW, and from various service officers of those two organizations throughout my district.

Now, the State commander of the American Legion in Oklahoma is devoting his full time to visiting the hospitals in that State. It is a full-time job. He gave up his private law practice and is devoting 1 year to that specific problem.

I have talked to his State service officer.

Now, I think that probably unlike the Indiana situation-I know nothing about that-that the hospitals in Oklahoma are overcrowded. I do not think they have an empty bed in one. I think they have these 677 or maybe more, trying to get in and I do not think we can even accept that as a true figure because when the hospital calls the service officers and says "Don't send us any more," then you have no way of arriving at what the waiting list would be if they were allowed to come over there and try to gain entrance.

This case that I cited of the veteran that was denied, I do not want to use that as an isolated case. I am using that for this premise, that many of them that go over there that are not in that critical condition are turned down and I never hear about them or no one else ever hears. That thing has just been headlined because the fellow died the next day. They go over with other types of emergency cases and are turned down and you never hear about them.

I am not unduly critical. I am trying to get to the point here. If General Hawley needs more personnel or needs more money I would

be his most ardent champion, but I certainly cannot put up a fight if he tells me that there are no emergency cases awaiting hospitali

zation.

That presents a rosy picture which in my State it certainly is not, and I just want him to know that this thing cannot be compared to the situation that Mr. Rankin is talking of, some psychiatrics writing in that they were not well treated by the hospitals.

I am not complaining about that. What I am talking about is these veterans that need hospitalization and cannot get in. Mr. CROW. Will the gentleman yield?

I think the gentleman himself is in a pretty good position to go to the President's Budget Committee in regard to this. I do not think I would be but I think you are. Maybe it would be well to go and talk to them about it.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. What good is it going to do me to go to the Budget Committee and then General Hawley goes there and states that everything is all right.

Mr. KEARNEY. Let us reserve this to the questioning of the general and not to partisan politics.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Mr. Crow, if the general went with me over there and said, there are no emergency cases or service-connected cases waiting to get in, the Budget Committee could very logically think that there was not any need to appropriate anything more for hospitalization.

Dr. HAWLEY. Mr. Johnson, your figures are different from mine. I have the official report of April 30, in Muskogee.

There were 384 available beds staffed and there were 330 patients. At Oklahoma City, there were 220 beds staffed, and 178 patients. So that in the State of Oklahoma, there were 604 beds and 508 patients on that day.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. 604 beds and 508 patients. Then why can't the emergency cases be admitted?

Mr. MITCHELL. That record comes from your administrator in the hospital there?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. MITCHELL. That is where the trouble is.

Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Phillips.

Mr. PHILLIPS. May I ask you one brief question, General?

What does your report show with reference to a waiting list of veterans in Tennessee, and particularly in reference to east Tennessee, around the Johnson City area?

Dr. HAWLEY. I will be able to break that down for you later.

I can only give it to you now as a total for branch No. 5, which includes not only Tennessee but Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama, which shows on April 30, there were a total of 2,531 on the waiting list; of which 19 were service connected and 671 were presumed eventually to be service connected.

Those are five States, and Tennessee in general has a very high ratio of beds per veteran in population.

I do not know as to Johnson City, whether you are speaking of the hospital or the hone or both?

Mr. PHILLIPS. Yes; both.

Dr. HAWLEY, I can get for you the waiting lists at all the hospitals and would be very glad to furnish you that, for Tennessee, as well. (The requested data follows:)