Ex-surgeon general tapped to lead VA

[unhappycamper]

Ex-surgeon general tapped to lead VA
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Oct 30, 2007 22:20:42 EDT

The White House’s choice to become the next secretary of veterans’ affairs has experience in dealing with the problems of health care for returning war veterans — but that may not necessarily help his nomination.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. James Peake, a former Army surgeon general from 2000 to 2004, served more than 40 years in uniform, but his last assignment as the Army’s top doctor in the early stages of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could be a problem or an asset when the Senate considers his nomination. If confirmed by the Senate, Peake would fill a vacancy created by the Oct. 1 resignation of R. James Nicholson.

“The burden is on Dr. Peake to prove to veterans around the country that he can be the honest, independent advocate we need to turn the VA around,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee and part of the Senate leadership.

“Given Dr. Peake’s past posts running the Army health care system, he will have serious and significant questions to answer about failed preparations for our returning wounded warriors,” Murray said in a statement. “For months we’ve been hearing horror stories from Walter Reed and other military care centers and I will want to know what role, if any, Dr. Peake played in the failures of the system.”

~snip~

Peake faced one of the early medical controversies of Operations Iraqi Freedom when National Guard and reserve members complained about being held on active duty in limbo because of bureaucratic difficulties in getting the medical appointments that would clear them to be demobilized and return to their civilian lives. Some reservists spent months waiting for such health exams.

Peake is a 1966 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. He started his military career as an infantry officer and is a decorated Vietnam veteran who served with the 101st Airborne Division. He attended medical school after the Vietnam War, and returned to military service as a general and thoracic surgeon. In retirement, Peake was involved as a senior officer with Project Hope in providing medical care for Hurricane Katrina and for tsunami relief in Indonesia.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/10/military_peake_va_071030/

[Up2Late]

1. What the headline should read: Bush nominates another Dud.

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15853746>

...former colleague said Peake bogs down in details. He said the VA medical system is such a mess that it's going to take someone with sweeping vision to overhaul it — and Peake doesn't have that vision. In fact, the former colleague and some veterans' advocates say that Peake's myopia might have helped cause the crisis that soldiers faced when they came home from the war with serious mental health problems. "That is clearly a failure," said Gary Myers, a former Army lawyer, now in private practice, who works on military cases.

Myers says it's important to remember that Peake was running the Army's medical system when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, and he kept running it until 18 months after the U.S. invaded Iraq. By late 2003, Army researchers were telling Peake that large numbers of troops were having serious mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder. An Army study, later published in the New England Journal of Medicine, warned that soldiers were reporting "important barriers to receiving mental health services."

Everyone from the press to a presidential commission found that when soldiers came back to America, the military's medical centers were overwhelmed. There was a huge shortage of mental health specialists. Soldiers couldn't get the treatment they needed, even when their lives were falling apart. So Myers wants senators to ask Peake at his confirmation hearings "why there wasn't an urgent effort to increase the number of mental health care providers in anticipation of the arrival of these young men and women," Myers said.

And of course, mental health wasn't the only problem. Some journalists were reporting back in 2003 that soldiers who came home with physical injuries were having a terrible time getting treatment, and were languishing in squalid barracks. Peake was in charge then, too.... (more and audio at the link)

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15853746>