Keeping with the status quo of his administration, President Bush has chosen to nominate an extremely unqualified buddy of his to be the next Surgeon General, Dr. James Holsinger. Holsinger was the Chief Medical Director at the Department of Veterans Affairs under George Bush Sr. Under his watch, the VA was found to be incompetent and negligent in several cases.
After several deaths at the VA in Chicago, Veterans Affairs Secretary, Edward J. Derwinski said:
“Mistakes were made. The medical care was clearly not what it should be.”
The agency’s announcement came a week after department investigators questioned poor supervision and delays between diagnosis and surgery, among other things.
After an extensive review of 15 deaths between June 1989 and March 1990, the agency acknowledged blame in six, said Dr. James Holsinger Jr., the agency’s chief medical officer.
In Wyoming, “Thirty VA hospitals were found to have ‘high numbers of patient complications and other indicators of substandard care.”
Dr. Holsinger isn’t even board certified. So why did he get nominated to be our country’s top doc?
The doctor and his wife, Barbara, have given more than $21,000 to Republican causes over the past decade, including $4,000 to President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.
And, like Bush’s other appointments in the rest of his administration, actually being “able” to do the job isn’t really all that important. Holsinger’s most important qualification is his master’s degree in biblical studies from Asbury Theological Seminary.
Holsinger serves as president of the United Methodist Church’s high court, its Judicial Council, and has made his negative views on homosexuality known for nearly two decades.
In the early 1990s, Holsinger resigned from the denomination’s Committee to Study Homosexuality because he believed the committee “would follow liberal lines,” according to Time magazine. At the time, he warned that acceptance of homosexuality would drive away millions of churchgoers.
