Shulkin out; Jackson in
According to Military Times, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin was fired by President Trump and he’s to be replaced by Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson who has been the personal physician of the past three Presidents, after he completed a tour of Iraq at the peak of hostilities in that war.
His bio says that Jackson specialized in Undersea medicine;
After completing his first year of residency training in 1996, he went on to become the honor graduate of the Navy’s Undersea Medical Officer Program in Groton, Connecticut. Uniquely qualified in submarine and hyperbaric medicine, his subsequent operational assignments included, instructor at the Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center in Panama City, Florida; det. officer in charge and diving medical officer at Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 8 in Sigonella, Italy; and diving safety officer at the Naval Safety Center in Norfolk.
In 2001, Jackson returned to Portsmouth Naval Medical Center to begin his residency in emergency medicine, finishing at the top of his class and receiving the honor graduate designation. Upon completing his residency in 2004, he was assigned as clinical faculty in the Emergency Medicine Residency Program at the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia. In 2005 he joined the 2nd Marines, Combat Logistics Regiment 25, in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. From there he deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom as the emergency medicine physician in charge of resuscitative medicine for a forward deployed Surgical Shock Trauma Platoon in Taqaddum, Iraq.
He’s certainly qualified as a clinician, but his skill as a bureaucrat has yet to be tested.
Category: Veterans' Affairs Department
Frankly, Jonn, I hope his “skill as a bureaucrat” is NEVER tested.
The biggest problem with the VA is that it’s chock-full of career bureaucrats and seems to have damn few competent managers or leaders. On occasion, managerial competence and leadership are found among bureaucrats. But my experience has been it’s quite rare to have someone who’s competent as all three.
Given the choice, I’ll take competence and leadership skill in someone running a large organization. Skill in “building and defending a bigger rice bowl” isn’t really necessary.
No matter how earnest, dedicated or caring he is, it won’t make a damn bit of difference if he can’t get rid of those civil-service protected idiots that are currently in charge of the place.
Just because I like the guy that works on my car. Doesn’t mean he would excel at running the dealership If I could draw a comparison . Still I wish him the best of luck.
once you come to grips with the fact that the VA is not a health care enterprise, but a jobs program you realize why it never improves.
There is no need for improvement. The VA is excellent at the core mission; jobs for those who are not competitive in a general sense.
This jobs program mission also applies to:
FBI
ATF
FAA
DOJ
DHS
TSA
FDA
HHS
Education
DoE
TVA
PBS
DMV
DOT
Congress
Senate
DoD
And add most state agencies (DMV, etc.,) as well.
Sadly, Trump is finding out draining the swamp is a LOT fucking harder than it looks.
Administrations come and go, but the BUREAUCRACY lives forever.
I’ll take exception to the DoD on your list. At least in my little part, the pressure is never ending and turn-over is high. The military folks rotate out every three years or so- the continuity is us old hands and our contractor support. We never forget just who our end-user is, because most of us have been there. I’m breaking in a brand new Project Officer as I type this, and during his tour he will become a flight test expert, and of course then move on.
Agreed. Having served 25 in USAF, I am now serve in GS. The beauty of it for me is that in Employee Relations I get to remove/suspend/discipline government employees. Just like on AD there is a % that are lazy, corrupt and/or riding it out. They say you can’t fire a gov’t worker. I have fired a dozen in 2 years. Not a swamp drained but tryin’
I would add that we could also get rid of most of them and not impact the quality of American lives except to have them improve.
If I, a petty state bureaucrat, may offer a different perspective:
Yes, there are people in any bureaucracy – governmental or otherwise – who are ‘there’ only to satisfy their little fragile egos. I’ve seen it in for-profit, non-profit, and state agencies.
But there are a lot of folks in each of them who are there to actually provide a service and do the job to the best of their abilities.
And sometimes, in any of those groups, identifying the deadwood is difficult, and eliminating it is made hard by laws designed to protect others from people like them.
I don’t think we will get 100% swamp-draining in any of those areas. It is worth the effort, but turning a swamp into a desert isn’t the answer, either.
i went through this at FT Benning when the hospital got a new combat commander. He is going to try like hell to run the VA as a combat support hospital, a well trained team of people that actually know their job as well as their adjacent departments (medics know how to run the x-ray machine and the x ray tech knows basic trauma ) which works really well until the civilians start to complain. in the military, at least you can relieve or reassign with out going through some buraticatic job safety net.
I thought Shulkin was doing what needed to be done. What did I miss?
Well, I hope this works out well. The doctor may be a fine physician, but is he enough of a butthead to stomp on bad behavior by uncaring and lazy civil service people?
From what I heard on the news, he took an official business trip to Europe, which might have been a bit too personal in nature. He maintains that an IG report mischaracterizes his activities while there.
Okay, thanks for the info.
I really feel sorry for him. The system is set up for his failure, it’s nearly impossible to get rid of deadwood without a drawn out process and too many are only interested in only doing the absolute minimum they have to do to get by in the max amount of time. Every time we get a new VA Secretary people get their hopes up, unfortunately things aren’t going to change until they find a way to get rid of the unions that protect the deadwood and pisspoor employees. I’ve worked in union shops (and been a union steward) and non-union companies, the dirtbags didn’t last at the non-union company; I only saw two people successfully fired out of the union company (1 was doing B&E’s using a company vehicle during downtime; the other was caught stealing narcotics from a hospital ER). If you get rid of the unions you can get rid of the bad employees and replace them with decent performers, maybe you won’t see such a crapshow. Hey, I can dream can’t I?
Retired Devil Doc, I retired from the Teamsters union and you are right about difficulty in getting rid of lay about employees. Many union trucking companies are out of business because of that. I have worked for a few of them and had to find new employment because of the dead wood draging a good company under. There are hard working and competent union workers but it only takes a few do do a lot of damage to the profitability of a company.
A lot of the really good providers at the union company I worked for left when competitors moved into the area and they were left with the mediocre crews, people who didn’t know any better, and people who had really sweet shifts and were only there two days a week. Long story short they ended up going from a major player in the area to an asterisk. What you’re saying goes across the board.
^^^ WORD ^^^
Shulkin is accepting his replacement with grace and class.
Or not.
Link
I suppose his opposition to the privatization of his rice bowl and a small matter of fraud had nothing to do with his departure.
He said a great deal more, all of it lambasting the Trump Administration for looking to privatize the VA. The funny thing is that all of the things that he says will happen if VA health care is privatized have been infused in the VA and its just-a-government job culture for decades. He should be out. He likes how the VA operates.
Yes he did, which is why I placed a link in the post. In the interest of brevity I try to pen a minimal “teaser” post, and let those who want more are able to easily reach it.
As a clinician, the dude is a stone cold stud. Does he have the management skills necessary? We will see, but I think it’s a positive that an actual doctor is in there now.
Well, OT, I can’t say I share your opinion.
IMO the VA is out of control across the board – and providing medical care is less than half of what the VA does, spending-wise. So I’m not sure that being a stud doc is the skill that’s needed to turn around a government agency that spends nearly $200B annually – less than half of which is spent on medical care – and which needs fixing almost everywhere.
I also see a couple of other potential problems with putting a doctor in charge of the entire VA vice simply the VA med system. First: it’s been my experience that doctors tend towards having a “screw the cost, do what’s best for the patient” philosophy. Unfortunately, Uncle Sam is freaking broke – so that’s not a viable management style when running a major part of the Federal government. When running an organization with a fixed annual budget, you can’t take that attitude; instead, you have to get the “most for the money” – which means you simply won’t be able to do everything for everyone.
A second – and related – potential problem is that being a doctor, he may favor the VA medical system at the expense of other parts of the VA that need resources (fixed annual budget, remember). VA healthcare may improve while other areas (C&P, home loans, etc . . . ) get even worse due to lack of either resources or management emphasis. That’s not a good solution when like the VA you have multiple areas that are hurting – and are all important.
Not saying that RDML Jackson won’t do a great job. His background may have given him experience in making big-dollar resource allocation decisions among multiple different types of mission, both medical and non-medical. But I’d feel much better if Jackson were being put in charge of the VHA – and some former governor or industry exec who had a load of experience in “herding cats” and making hard, big-dollar resource-allocation decisions was being appointed to run the overall show.
I heard about this on the morning radio show on my drive to work (the “Morning Buzz” here in NH). The announcer stated it was “Trumps personal doctor” and they all made it sounds as if he was just an unqualified crony being given a cushy job. It’s good to hear the real story presented in a non-biased, honest way.
And MAN, I miss my satellite radio. I forgot how utterly awful some of these local radio ‘performers’ are.
Bim, try tuning in to WNTK out of New London N H. It is one of the only conservative radio stations around.
99.7, I forgot to give you the freeqency, sorry.
Try WGAN in Portland Maine. Powerful signal.
Rush Limbaugh, Howie Carr etc.
Which is why I make it a point to never listen to WHEB.
Idiots talking to idiots.
SiriusXM is worth every penny to me.
We don’t need bureaucrats, we need people who can actually get things done.
The good news: Shulkin is out.
The bad news: The new guy had his finger up Baracka’s ass.
Hey. It’s after lunchtime–on the east coast, anyway.
Saw this coming the day they hired him
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Georgia
No one answers a phone. No major facility rate over two stars by their system. Calls to neighboring states yield long wait times or worse.
I don’t use VA since they almost killed me in surgery and post op care almost killed me again.
VA works for you – good.
But there is a universe of complaints – odds are a great number have merit.
Looking at privatize can’t hurt –
unless you can explain how the current model is working so well…..
Remember when Shinseki was canned, how everyone was on cloud nine and how everything at the VA was going to finally be great again?
Well here we are, after several VA secretaries and numerous corruption and scandals later, and the VA still can’t get its act together.
When will people learn.