{"id":20977,"date":"2014-06-30T14:08:58","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T18:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=20977"},"modified":"2014-06-30T14:08:58","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T18:08:58","slug":"obama-goes-outside-military-brass-medical-community-for-new-va-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/20977\/obama-goes-outside-military-brass-medical-community-for-new-va-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Goes Outside Military Brass, Medical Community for New VA Chief"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert McDonald<\/a>, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, is President Barack Obama\u2019s nominee to run the scandal-ridden Department of Veterans Affairs.<\/p>\n

McDonald\u2019s nomination is catching some in the veterans\u2019 community off-guard. Unlike previous VA Secretaries, he\u2019s not a general \u2013 though he did graduate from West Point and serve for five years as an Army paratrooper before jumping to P&G.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also neither a medical doctor, nor does he have experience administering a hospital; traits that some think would be useful for a person stepping into the nation\u2019s largest health system with 1,700 facilities.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the case being made for McDonald is that his background in brand management and customer service<\/a> signals that Obama thinks the main problem at the VA is bad leadership.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to an interesting question \u2013 Is McDonald\u2019s job just to make the VA\u2019s public face more attractive, or is it to get the sprawling department into tip-top, customer satisfaction shape?<\/p>\n

The answer depends on how much latitude President Obama is giving McDonald to operate. For example, in places like Phoenix where staff and administrators falsified records to get performance bonuses<\/a>, does McDonald have the authority to fire and hire political appointees as well as career civil servants? Does he have the flexibility to outsource patients to private medical providers<\/a> in regions where the VA hospitals are overbooked?<\/p>\n

Senate Republicans should ask McDonald these and other questions during his confirmation hearings. Veterans and their families deserve to know whether the VA\u2019s new chief has the power to be a turnaround artist, or just a place warmer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert McDonald, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, is President Barack Obama\u2019s nominee to run the scandal-ridden Department of Veterans Affairs. McDonald\u2019s nomination is catching some in the veterans\u2019 community off-guard. Unlike previous VA Secretaries, he\u2019s not a general \u2013 though he did graduate from West Point and serve for five years as an Army […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,3308,342,4517,3178],"class_list":["post-20977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-health","tag-military","tag-va","tag-veteran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20977"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20987,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20977\/revisions\/20987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}