Discussion»Questions»Military» Have you ever asked a question either here or elsewhere that you could not get a solid answer to? I have asked this one numerous times:
"The surgeon general wears a uniform because the organization of which she is the chief, the U.S. Public Health Service, is a uniformed service. So are mail carriers, you may say, but the postmaster general doesn't get to dress like Horatio Hornblower. The difference is that the PHS began as the Marine Hospital Service, which was organized along military lines in 1870 to minister to merchant sailors. The members were (and still are) given military-style commissions and naval-style ranks, the idea being that they were a mobile force ready to be thrown into the fray wherever germs raised their ugly little heads."
The Surgeon General is a commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, one of the seven uniformed services of the United States, and by law holds the rank of vice admiral.
Because in order to efficiently do their jobs medical specialists in the military must outrank all other military personnel they are expected to come into contact with. Else we might get a situation where a medically ignorant Higher ranking officer caused the death of patients by voicing his guesses at what was good medical procedure.
And then senior medical people must have an even higher rank to be able to order them around.
With such artifice the efficiency of personnell is salvaged without casting doubts on the hierarchical structure of the military.
SpunkySenior 