My brother offers harsh words for the administration’s direction with Veteran’s hospitals and their nominee to run the Department of Veteran’s Affairs . I don’t know enough about Robert McDonnell to dismiss him as a “Republican soap and toothpaste salesman,” but I generally do defer to Phil when it comes to anything having to do with America’s health care systems.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Excellent article by your brother. Straightforward, easy to read, and factually sound. Made some of those points in my diary on this issue. Nice to see confirmation of what a VA contract officer told me wrt to the politicization of senior positions during the Bush years.
Would like to highlight one issue your brother brought up that extends far beyond the VA Medical system:
Would add the the shortage in primary care medical professionals includes nurses and nurse practitioners as well as doctors. It was so obvious in 2009 that without a major fix at this level, the US healthcare system would remain hobbled and expensive. Health insurance couldn’t fix that in a reasonably short period of time if at all. Selling an investment in the education and training of additional primary care providers for the VA and public health hospitals would have been easy. Today five years on, the shortage would be smaller and we would be well on our way to relieving it completely by 2020.
And how many Bush imbeds are still in the walls.
Who knows? At this point on paper those in their ranks are indistinguishable from any other agency career hire. Long-term employee know who they are and how disruptive they are to well-functioning operations, but who are they going to tell?
Props to Phillip. Excellent work. And on target. More White House duck and cover.