Profiteering on the wounds of veterans

Corporate profiteering against Iraq vets?
Bush's nominee to head the Department of Veterans Affairs is the second to come from a private company that rakes in millions from VA contracts.

By Mark Benjamin

Nov. 20, 2007 WASHINGTON -- President Bush late last month nominated retired Lt. Gen. James Peake to be the next secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is not an inconsequential wartime post: The department is the second-largest government agency after the Defense Department. And the VA faces the awesome responsibility of caring for several generations of veterans, including the crush of American service members back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

On paper, Peake seems qualified. Wounded twice in Vietnam, he retired in 2004 from his post as Army surgeon general, the Army's top medical officer, with 40 years of experience in the field of military medicine.

But Bush plucked Peake directly from a private company that has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from contracts with the VA -- and Peake himself helped develop proposals for the company to contract with the VA. That has raised questions about conflict of interest, potentially pitting veterans' care against corporate profits. Moreover, if he is confirmed, Peake will be the second head of the VA under the Bush administration to come from that same private contractor, QTC Management Inc.

Observers say QTC Management has performed high-quality work, and its former president, who also headed the VA under Bush, withstood past scrutiny by congressional investigators. But ever since Dick Cheney left Halliburton to become vice president, Bush administration critics have sounded the alarm about war profiteering seeping into the heart of the U.S. government. The changing leadership at the VA represents a little-known turn of the revolving door between contractors and the Bush administration. Veterans' advocates also worry that Peake's nomination suggests the White House may be interested in privatizing veterans' healthcare to an unhealthy degree.

The Veterans Affairs Department runs more than a thousand hospitals and outpatient clinics to care for veterans, including the influx of hundreds of thousands of veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and are now out of the military and want to see a VA doctor.

Those veterans also seek disability checks as remuneration for their service-related ills. Every year the VA hands out over $40 billion in checks to veterans as compensation for everything from missing limbs to post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Also from Army Times
VA nominee Peake’s hearing set for Dec. 5
By Rick Maze - Staff writerPosted : Tuesday Nov 20, 2007 5:52:55 EST

The Bush administration’s nominee to be the next secretary of veterans’ affairs will appear before a Senate committee Dec. 5 to answer questions about what he will bring to the job if confirmed.
This could be a quick process if retired Lt. Gen. James Peake, a West Point graduate and former Army surgeon general, satisfies the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee that he is prepared to take on the many challenges facing the Department of Veterans Affairs, including a growing backlog of benefits claims, lengthy waits for some appointments and treatment of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, especially for mental health issues.
But Senate aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Peake’s nomination could easily become a prolonged fight if his answers are unsatisfying or if his nomination somehow gets tied up in a partisan feud that has delayed action on legislation to improve veterans’ benefits and health care.
The Senate committee, chaired by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, has been complaining that leaving the VA secretary’s post vacant since Oct. 1 seems to indicate the Bush administration considers veterans’ issues to be unimportant.
The White House formally nominated Peake for the VA post on Thursday, just as Congress was beginning a previously scheduled two-week break. The Dec. 5 hearing will come on the first week back from the break. Congressional leaders hoping to end the legislative session no later than Dec. 21, which does not allow a lot of time for extensive hearings or investigation.
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