Summary And Critique Of Ricky Wells

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Summary and Critique of Ricky Wells A prominent issue has came to rise with the recent presidential election, that issue being the healthcare our veterans are receiving. The New York Times asked students to write about what they thought was the most pressing matter for this election, and Ricky Wells provided with his stance on veteran healthcare. Although Ricky Wells is extremely passionate about the issue of veteran suicides and presents the reader with first-hand experience, he is unable to effectively make his argument again the V.A. system. In The New York Times article, "Let's Take Better Care of Our Veterans", author Ricky Wells criticizes our politicians lack of compassion and care to give veterans the healthcare they need and deserve. Wells claims politicians readily send our military to war, but once they arrive back home, the Veteran Affairs (V.A.) system "drags their feet" to give them much further thought. The University …show more content…
The focus of all his energy towards the "twenty-two veterans a day committing suicide" (Wells) is not even cited, nor is any of examples given about how the V.A. system specifically fails veterans. Wells essentially skewed the data so much that corrections had to be later put in place to provide the facts he left out. The corrections brings to light the amount of veteran suicides are composed of "70 percent...are among those aged 50 years and older", which Wells does not mention or acknowledge. That's a relatively large piece of data left out. Baker relates to the reader those who are part of the twenty-two are not only those recently coming back from war, but also veterans who have been back for years. Baker also further includes President Obama expressing that correcting the V.A. system "is only part of the problem", a point that does not seem to have came to Wells'

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