Veterans are among our greatest heroes. After willingly putting their lives on the line they have been promised access to at least the same quality healthcare of most Americans. The US Department of Veterans Affairs is charged with fulfilling that promise. What happens when a government agency intended to look after its country's former soldiers is rife with dysfunction and indifference?

In Mission Betrayed author surgeon and former VA doctor Michael J. Mann unabashedly documents the realities of the current Veterans Health Administration. Even worse than inexcusably long wait times are the deceptive statistics that allow VA administrators to conceal mediocrity abuse and neglect and that instigate the denial of life-saving surgery to sick veterans. Drawing on both personal experience and real-life stories of vets who have been harmed at times to the point of death by the agency meant to protect them Mission Betrayed sheds light on a broken system like nothing before it.

Professor Michael J. Mann M.D. is a thoracic surgeon and an innovator of genetic and molecular therapies and diagnostics for thoracic and cardiovascular disease. He joined the faculty at the University of California San Francisco in 2003 having received an A.B. (summa cum laude) in synthetic chemistry from Princeton University and an M.D. from Stanford University. Dr. Mann completed his General Surgery residency at Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women's Hospital where he also served on the Faculty of Cardiovascular Medicine and subsequently completed his fellowship in Cardiothoracic Surgery at UCSF. He has been named to the U.S. News and World Report list of "Top Doctors" in the United States. Dr. Mann's basic science and translational clinical research has been published in world-leading journals such as The Lancet the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and has been funded by the NIH.