Posted on 04/04/2018 8:04:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
Since President Trump ousted Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, the question reverberating in Washington is whether Trump's new pick, Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, is capable of heading a department with 360,000 employees and 9 million vets under its care. Senate Democrats carp he lacks experience running "a complex organization."
Experience is overrated. President Obama's VA Secretary, Robert McDonald, failed miserably, despite having run Procter & Gamble. Vets died on phony wait lists on McDonald's watch.
Jackson's last combat role was with a surgical shock trauma unit in Iraq. Sounds like good preparation for battling the killer VA bureaucracy.
Jackson also shares Trump's vision of putting vets in the driver's seat about their own medical care. Here's what Jackson can learn from his predecessors' failures.
Lesson 1: Make vets the priority, not protecting the VA bureaucracy. Shulkin refused to do that.
Trump has pledged to fix the Veterans Choice Program so vets can see private doctors when they decide it's necessary. VCP was created in 2014 after revelations that sick vets were dying on wait lists at VA hospitals. VCP is supposed to allow vets to get private care if they live far from a VA facility or have waited too long. But VCP's red tape makes seeing an outside doctor almost impossible. That's deliberate. Senator Bernie Sanders, who co-authored VCP legislation, relies on union campaign contributions and will do just about anything to protect union jobs at the VA. Keeping vets trapped at the VA with no alternatives is a job protection racket.
Shulkin was part of that racket, too. He misled Trump and Congress with double talk about reforming VCP "in a way that will work for veterans and work for VA." But protecting VA bureaucracy shouldn't be a consideration, when vets' lives are at stake.
Shulkin showed his true colors when Congress passed last month's big spending package. Trump and congressional Republicans had pushed hard to include VA reforms helping vets see outside doctors.
But the key person to sell this to Congress was Shulkin, and he equivocated, allowing Democrats to block its passage. It was a setback for Trump and vets. No wonder Shulkin was canned days later -- not because of flimsy travel expense abuse allegations.
Lesson 2: Cut wait times in half at the VA.
Shulkin claimed success in reducing waits, but that's questionable. VA bureaucrats are still fudging the numbers, according to the inspector general.
Here's a remedy. A whopping 47 percent of VA health care users are 65 or older. They need angioplasty and bypass surgery like other seniors. They use the VA to avoid Medicare's out-of-pocket expenses, because their median annual income is only $24,000. Picking up their co-pays would cost very little and encourage them to use Medicare instead of the VA Bingo, and it would cut VA wait times by nearly half, making room for younger vets to get combat-related care only the VA can provide.
Lesson 3: Don't count on VA bureaucrats to fess up when things go wrong. Jackson should use unannounced audits to uncover dangerous conditions at medical facilities, instead of trusting officials to report them up the chain of command.
An inspector general report last month exposed "a breakdown of core services" at medical centers under Shulkin's command. At the Washington, D.C., facility, under Shulkin's nose, patients were needlessly overexposed to anesthesia due to inventory mismanagement. After patients were put under, surgeons sometimes discovered they were out of equipment and had to race across the street to borrow it from another hospital or reschedule the procedure. Shulkin claims he could "not recall" ever being notified of such problems. He expected to be notified?
Pundits are predicting a confirmation battle. The smart money should be on Jackson. He's combat tested. Disregard the partisan drivel about his lack of experience running a big organization. It's coming from the same people who had no problem making a community organizer the president.
Here is what I found via
Early life, education, and personal life
Shulkin was born at the Fort Sheridan U.S. Army base in Highland Park, Illinois to Mark Weiss Shulkin and Sonya Lee (née Edelman), where his father, served as an Army psychiatrist. Both of his grandfathers fought in World War I. He received a BA from Hampshire College in 1982, and an MD degree from Medical College of Pennsylvania (which has since merged into Drexel University) in 1986; he then did his medical internship at Yale School of Medicine, and his residency and fellowship in General Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Presbyterian Medical Center. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.
The VA bureaucrats are organized crime.
Immediately investigate DFAS.
My daughter worked for one of the big6 consulting firms and her client was the VA. They spend millions on consultants and collect hundreds of binders of suggestions and never implement anything. The things she would tell me were shocking. She switched to private consulting and left federal because of that client.
“....capable of heading a department with 360,000 employees and 9 million vets under its care.”
The VA is just a huge “jobs program.” Just like the USPS, but a little smaller, USPS currently has 503,000 “employees,” down now from nearly 800,000, but it should probably be no more than 250,000. There is absolutely no reason to have a separate healthcare system for our veterans. Fold them into the nation’s healthcare system with A+ government-provided insurance, sell off the VA Hospitals and fold them into the country’s HC system as well. The money paid to the 360,000 “postal workers in white coats” would more than cover the move. The last people who should be receiving sub-standard healthcare are our military and retired military personnel.
“Lesson 3: Don’t count on VA bureaucrats to fess up when things go wrong. Jackson should use unannounced audits to uncover dangerous conditions at medical facilities, instead of trusting officials to report them up the chain of command.”
And fire the bastards on the spot who are covering up deficiencies. Shulkin was the Christoper Wray of the VA. Wray is another useless bureaucrat who sees his job as protecting his people, even when they don’t deserve it.
Get rid of government unions.
Establish job descriptions/expectations.
People who fail to do their job should be fired. Reviews will be in 3 months.
Managers who fail to fire 10% of their staff in the first 3 months should be fired. (You KNOW there is that much waste. Give the manager’s a clear incentive to clean house.)
Being a vet doesn't necessarily confer management skills on anyone. All previous VA Secs. were vets and that didn't solve all the problems.
“I did a search on Shulkin and found that unlike Admiral Ronny Jackson, he never served in the military, so why he was chosen as Veterans Administration director is beyond me.”
He’s a Secular Progressive Capo and he loved Obola. The only remaining question is why did Trump keep him on in the first place. Shulkin is just another bull$hitting Liberal.
Kinda curious about this Admiral, but have high hopes. Considering his predecessors, he has nowhere to go but up.
Looking at his medals, he has a noticeable gap in personal awards. Specifically between his Naval Comm’s and LoM. I have as many NC’s and NA’s as he does, but also have a Meritorious Service Medal and Air Medal. He goes right to the Legion of Merit (which is practically a mandatory award for O-6’s) and the Defense Superior Service Medal (which is given after a tour at the Pentagon). So he has a couple that practically all Navy O-6’s and above should have, but if his combat tour was at a trauma center in Iraq, then he should have numerous MSM’s and even a Bronze or two.
I hope he turns out better than many before him, but I see him as a career cubical filler.
An admiral doesn’t have any experience running a complex organization? What do these people think the Navy is? a couple of boats and a dozen sailors?
An admiral doesn’t have any experience running a complex organization? What do these people think the Navy is? a couple of boats and a dozen sailors?
Of course an Admiral does.
That alone would go a long ways to solving much of the problems we vets suffer at the hands of obnoxious, rude and often downright incompetent and unqualified VA employees.
As Rush has said on many other occasions, Trump doesn’t believe himself particularly political, merely pragmatic and willing to trust democRATS and even liberals until he finds them opposing what he believes the right thing to do.
And pay them enough to keep them there.
It is a bit odd that he made Rear Admiral - or got an LoM - without an MCM. One possibility is that he’s NOT an ass-kisser and a couple of commanders didn’t like that, so didn’t give him EOT awards...
That, or he just stayed hidden.
>>> so why he was chosen as Veterans Administration director is beyond me.
You couldn’t scroll down further on the wikipedia page to which you linked to see his experience as a hospital system administrator.
“Shulkin served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. He also served as president of Morristown Medical Center and as vice president of Atlantic Health System Accountable Care Organization.
He has been Chief Medical Officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University Hospital, and the Medical College of Pennsylvania Hospital.
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