Washington has come up with twice the usual number of solutions to the problem of scandalously poor outpatient treatment and housing at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

President Bush has named former Senate Republican leader Bob Dole and former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, a Democrat, to co-chair a bipartisan commission to study the care given wounded troops once they're brought home. Both are respected Washington veterans, and Dole would seem an inspired choice given his own hellish recovery from wounds in World War II.

Bush also named a Cabinet-level task force to come up with immediate improvements in the after-care of the wounded, a sad episode that had been simmering out of sight of the larger world until The Washington Post spotlighted it.

Separately, the Pentagon has begun a review of outpatient care, and committees in both the House and Senate have begun hearings.

Contacted by distraught families with wounded soldiers at Walter Reed, the Post documented dilapidated and unsanitary housing, unreasonable and arbitrary demands on the outpatients and soldiers left in bureaucratic limbo as they sought rehabilitation and benefits.

Walter Reed is a straight shot up 16th Street from the White House, regularly visited by VIPs and within easy distance of the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. If the outpatient care is so bad there, it makes one wonder what it is like at less visible hospitals.