There is a lot of concern about President Spanky's selection of Navy Read Admiral Jackson to run the Veterans Administration.
The VA is a huge operation. It has over 360,000 employees, 170 medical centers and over a thousand separate clinics.
Jackson's management experience seems to be limited to supervision of a "trauma platoon". Granted, I have no idea what a trauma platoon does on a day to day basis. They seem to be a self-contained mobile ER. But a platoon is pretty fucking small unit. A rifle platoon has about 40 soldiers and it is led by a butter bar (2nd lieutenant). It's probably not a far stretch to suggest that a trauma platoon doesn't differ greatly in size.
What does differ is the leadership. The platoon commander in an infantry unit is, essentially, a training job. The trauma platoon CO is a physician who is experienced at working in an ER and who is qualified to supervise one.
But that job is not one that lends itself to administering a hospital, let alone hundreds of hospitals and clinics. There is nothing that is coming to light about Admiral Jackson's background that suggests to any degree, that he has the skill set to manage an extremely large and convoluted organization. If the goal was to fix the VA, there are people out there who have experience in managing large hospital corporations.
Jackson, to his credit, is pretty much following the orders of his CinC. But the reality is that he's basically been told to start walking around a minefield and see if anything blows him up. His only qualification is that Spanky likes him. As far as that goes, it'd be about the same as if he promoted the White House Gardener to run the Department of Agriculture.
The nomination of Admiral Jackson as the Secretary of the Veterans Administration should be rejected by the Senate, for both the good of the country and for the good of Admiral Jackson.
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I wonder about the evaluation of Trump's health Jackson gave the media. “Some people have just great genes. I told the president that if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old.” Have you ever heard hyperbole like that from a doctor? And with a whiff of eugenics in the bargain?
I wonder if he wasn't signaling "I'm following orders", kinda like that POW blinking TORTURE in Morse code.
He seems to have been well liked and considered competent as a doctor, but the VA is the second largest agency in government.
Shulkin is saying he got pushed out because he was standing in the way of privatization, and it is true that the Republicans have had a hard-on for privatizing the VA for a long time.
Where Fergus stands on the privatization issue isn't really clear, but the veterans themselves don't favor it.
It's easy to criticize the VA. It's a huge bureaucracy mired in the transition from paper-based record keeping to computers that has repeatedly failed to implement flawed new software while at the same time struggling under the flood of new post 9-11 veterans and new rules about Vietnam era veterans, all the while being a convenient political football and a target of right wing ire over being a giant, functioning example of socialized medicine.
I have heard the horror stories.
I also have friends who love the healthcare they get from the VA.
My best friend's dad got a quadruple bypass surgery from the VA and lived 25 more years.
Basically, I just hope this isn't an opening gambit in the dismantling of the VA, because I don't feel that privatization will best serve the veterans themselves after the initial set up is past and funding becomes easier to deny politically.
-Doug in Oakland
Yer right, but then again, professional managers haven't dome much of a job running the VA either.
Privatizations is ONE solution. Probably not the best, but it removes a great deal of the issues.....care is given at any medical facility instead of VA clinics. This removes a great number of employees....some, apparently uncaring and incompetent. I think that is is A solution. It likely isn't the best. But how does one totally revamp something like the VA without destroying it first?
And an honest question: With ObamaCare, why do we need the VA anyway?
How can you ask if ObamaCare, the thing you want to kill, can take over the VA?
Oh, I want to kill it. But since no one in the legislature does want it gone, isn't the VA kinda redundant? Looks like Barry gets his wish. The edge of socialism into our society....Care is care, right? Does it matter whether the BarryCare folks pay for it and we disband the VA? Why have 2 different GOVERNMENT providers of care?
I mean, because it appears that the RNC bois aren't gonna get rid of ObamaCare any time soon. Why spend all those dollars on the level after level of VA management (that appears to be incompetent anyway) when we have this wonderful Obamacare just sitting there to do the same thing?
Since you’re against socialism, B, can you locate that part of the public roads paid for by your taxes alone.
Of course, the DoD is the perfect socialist institution.
B,
Remember that Obama got the legislation through a Republican House and Senate . Obamacare is a Republican creation.
You are absolutely right about the VA being redundant in a universal medical system .
Glenn
DA: I like how y'all always fall back to "Roads" and "Defense" as an excuse for your side pushing the disease that socialism is.
You'd think you could come up with better arguments.
Name on place where socialism hasn't failed the people it is supposed to serve.
Name one place where capitalism has made life better for the population in general. It sure wasn't here, until a few layers of socialism were added (fair labor laws, child labor laws, universal education, old age safety nets, etc., etc.)
when mostly pure capitalism existed, it was very good for a handful of people, less good for a smallish professional class, and bone-crushingly oppressive for everyone else. as much as the right decries FDR, if it wasn't for him, we would have had either Fascism or the Terror.
B, I can do you one better, I can name a place where you can investigate a variant of Socialism for yourself.
Scandinavian society as a whole is often viewed from the outside as a progressive Utopia. To what extent is that stereotype true? On this Swedish Socialism Tour we critically assess some Swedish stereotypes in the company of a local expert, using the Klara, Stockholm district in the borough of Norrmalm as a backdrop for discussion. The renovation of the district was among the most emphatic in postwar Europe and part of the biggest ever building program in Sweden. Together, we'll discover the architecture of the modern Swedish welfare state, the idea of Swedish socialism, and explore the city through the lens of Sweden today.
https://www.contexttravel.com/cities/stockholm/tours/modern-sweden-in-context
Somehow, Sweden hasn’t turned into a hellhole yet.
Maybe, give it another century?
And yet, DA, there is this:
https://nypost.com/2015/10/19/sorry-bernie-scandinavia-is-no-socialist-paradise-after-all/
Thing is, that sort of society only works where the majority of folks have a work ethic and are predisposed to do their part.. (And if you go too far socialist, people who make money choose to go elsewhere)...The Lutheran upbringing (or at least societal roots) of most of the Scandianavians makes this possible. Not so with most societies. Especially not here in the US.
Plus, of course, they sell a LOT of machinery and gas/oil to their European neighbors, which pays for many of their socialist bills. (Were they truly socialist, they'd not charge more than their costs!)..And they really don't have much of a National Defense cost, instead relying on NATO (the US) to provide security and keep them safe....and foot the bill.
My issue with socialism, as Maggie Thatcher said, is that "eventually, you run out of other peoples money". So far, there hasn't been an exception to that.
Why do we need such a big defense budget in the first place?
And the NYC Post is my go-to place for dispassionate analysis of politics.
Look up the No True Scotsman fallacy. You come up with enough special pleading and cherry-picking facts to embarrass a Chicago politician.
And socialism doesn’t mean non-profit, btw.
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