EDITORIAL: Pick Him: Holsinger Good Choice for Surgeon General
By The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky.
May 26–It’s not just home-state loyalty that makes us enthusiastic about President Bush’s nomination of Dr. James Holsinger as U.S. surgeon general.
Holsinger has a distinguished career in public health care in Kentucky and throughout the Veterans Affairs system. Most notably, he stood out as secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services during the first two years of the Fletcher administration.
In that job, Holsinger hired competent, experienced and professional staff (and resisted hiring political operatives) and tackled some huge problems.
We didn’t agree on every detail of his administration but admired the concern for the health and welfare of Kentuckians that guided him.
Among the things he championed:
— Raising the excise tax on cigarettes (he suggested 75 cents a pack; we got only to 30 cents) and supporting tobacco-control initiatives.
— Modernizing the Medicaid system to deliver better health care to Kentuckians, resisting the harshest cuts in other states.
— Limiting soft-drink and junk-food sales to students. Holsinger lobbied for the limits and was active in the conference committee’s negotiation of the final bill.
Holsinger chairs the Get Healthy Kentucky! board, which advocates healthy lifestyle habits, a role that will help him pursue Bush’s stated priority of fighting childhood obesity.
Interestingly, Holsinger has experience fighting his own battle of the bulge. In 2004, he shared with the Herald-Leader the 18-month path he took to slim down and include exercise in his daily routine.
Holsinger was chancellor of the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center before he joined the cabinet and has been the Wethington Chair in Health Sciences and professor of preventive medicine since leaving. Before joining UK, he was chief of staff at several VA medical centers and did a stint as undersecretary for health at the VA Department in Washington.
Holsinger’s experience in Washington and Frankfort should help him survive the scrutiny of the confirmation process and the rigors of being in the public eye if he gets the job.
We wish him well.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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