President Barack Obama has nominated former Proctor & Gamble CEO Robert McDonald to take over the troubled Veterans Affairs (VA) Department.
While a former Army captain and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, McDonald has spent most of his career in the private sector.
In picking a businessman rather than a decorated general or health care leader, Obama is signaling that managerial experience is what he values most in VA leadership.
The former CEO will need to bring his three decades of experience managing one of the world’s most recognizable companies to an agency reeling from revelations of chronic, system-wide failure and veterans dying while on waiting lists for treatment.
McDonald’s nomination comes a month after the resignation of Eric Shinseki as VA secretary, following revelations of long wait times for treatment at VA facilities and falsification of records to cover them up.
The current crisis emerged after a whistle blower at the VA medical center in Phoenix alleged 40 veterans had died while waiting to receive care and that staff kept a secret list of patients in order to hide delays in care.
The crisis has since grown beyond the Phoenix hospital.
The inspector general at the VA Department said 26 VA facilities are being investigated nationwide.
The allegations are not new but a reflection of longstanding problems.
Obama once criticized the Bush administration’s handling of health care for veterans.
“When a veteran is denied health care, we are all dishonored,” he said in 2007 as a candidate for president. “When 400,000 veterans are stuck on a waiting list for claims, we need a new sense of urgency in this country. As president, I won’t stand for hundreds of veterans waiting for benefits.”
America’s veterans deserve and should expect timely health care and disability benefits when they leave active service.
Veterans who served their country should not be stuck on long waiting lists waiting for their claims to be addressed.
Since being elected, President Obama has highlighted the issue of better health care treatment for veterans.
However the fresh allegations have raised new concerns on whether the Obama administration can keep up with the huge influx of veterans returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the coming days McDonald will get a chance to outline his vision for providing timely, quality health care to veterans. But the VA needs more than a new leader, it needs a new direction.
(Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune)
