I’ve resisted, up until now, making any comment on the kerfuffle between the president and veterans groups over the former’s plan to raise $540 million for his broader health care program by forcing veterans to use their private medical insurance. I’ve resisted because I find the plan frankly incomprehensible.
Say you’re a soldier wounded or otherwise injured in the line of duty. You get stabilized at a field hospital, are sent eventually to a major medical center in Europe or at home, and are eventually discharged, losing your active duty medical benefits. The consequences of service related injuries could easily make you uninsurable by virtue of pre-existing conditions for most insurance providers even if they don’t make you unemployable for any work that offers medical insurance – a big “if” for seriously disabled vets. Even if you could get private insurance, the long term consequences of service related injuries could easily exceed annual insurance caps. Don’t get me started on co-pays.
Which is where the Veterans Administration hospital system is supposed to step in. VA medical care is only provided to veterans when their injuries are service related. You get shot in the leg in the line of service, and the VA covers the sequelae after your service is terminated. You break a leg after that service is complete and that’s on you.
In fact, if the private insurance system could cope with service related injuries, we wouldn’t need the VA at all.
The whole idea of placing a private burden on the cost of public service is so politically anathematic that it’s difficult to see what’s behind this. I mean, give the man his due, the president is a very intelligent man with keen political instincts. Why would he grasp this particular nettle?
Greyhawk has been giving the matter some thought, and learns that “President Obama made clear during our discussion that he intends to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans with service-connected disabilities.”
But how exactly does he plan to do that?
If he mandates that costly veterans medical care be borne by the private system, those costs will be spread among the broader pool of insured workers, essentially a hidden tax that will have to be roughly equivalent to the savings garnered since they are paid directly back to the VA system. Unless, of course, quality of care is reduced.
Additionally, higher insurance premium co-pays for employers may force more companies out of the private system, leading to even more uninsured workers – exactly the opposite result that sensible policies should dictate.
It doesn’t make any economic or political sense that I can see.
I just don’t get it.
Update: Upon further review, the president apparently finds his plan incomprehensible as well.
President Obama will not pursue a proposal that would have allowed the VA to charge private insurance companies for the treatment of veterans with service- or war-related injuries. The proposal raised the ire of prominent Democrats on the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs panels. On Wednesday morning 68 Democratic and GOP House members sent Obama a letter, initiated by freshman Rep. Glenn Nye (D-Va.), urging the administration to drop the proposal.
Hurricane Katrina – really, the media coverage of the hurricane’s aftermath – fatally damaged the Bush presidency’s claim to competence in the eyes of the general, non-partisan populace. The rough seas surrounding the current administration seems self-generated.
I hope they find their footing.
“Additionally, higher insurance premium co-pays for employers may force more companies out of the private system”
And there’s your answer. The more companies opt out of providing private health insurance, the more demand there will be for a nationalized system. Exactly what Obama has said in the past that he wants.
Lex:
I would respectfully submit that given the expertise and experience of the staff at the White House that this whole event was NOT unintentional.
A) It distracts from other actions that those who may hold different opinions than the Current Administration would be speaking out about and focuses their energy and attention from the hand holding the coin, as it were. Misdirection is what separates good magicians from amateurs.
B) It allows those in the chattering classes who are in greater accord with the aims and aspirations of the Current Administration to begin to author “think pieces” about how this really isn’t such a bad idea, cook up numbers “demonstrating” how it’s more cost efficient, etc. Thus, in two or three years, after the “battlefield prep” or propagandizing The Big Lie as it were, it can be sprung again upon a now benumbed populace.
As we say up here in Minnesota: “Good luck.”
VR,
Comjam
Exactly correct meow by Schroedinger’s Cat.
Another benefit “from a progressive view” is that it works to weaken the all-volunteer force.
All consistent with the early history of our POTUS. But, after all, people were surprised by Hitler even though he had published Mein Kampf.
Boy, are you ever right! Why should ANYONE be surprised? Didn’t ANYBODY read ANYTHING the guy wrote or said prior to the election? It was all there if one only cared to look…
Not only that, but while he’s achieving his long-range goal that the “Cat” alludes to above, he garners short-run political benefits by taking VA medical costs off-budget out of the public eye and freeing up tax-dollars for HIS pet programs like community organizing, and his brown-shirt Civilian Corps sworn personally loyal to him and cemented with the tax-dollars formerly directed towards VA health-care–thus killing two birds with a single stone–a) funding his pet project with ostensibly no “new” taxes (i.e., because he’s using the income stream formerly directed at VA) and, b) instituting a new, hidden tax on the public to support pvt care for VA patients.
First, I do not believe that President BHO cares about Service Personnel.
No, let me start again on a positive note.
I strongly believe that President BHO DOES NOT care about Service Personnel, either active duty or retired. I do believe that BHO cares about keeping the Dems in power and turning America into a Socialist country.
If BHO can make a sweeping statement or policy to achieve his goals, and under the guise of a Kabuki Dance, not have to reveal the details of what it REALLY means, he is happy to do so.
We are only past the Ides of March in his first year in office and look at how much damage he has caused the country.
He has no honor and cannot be trusted.
Overheard in a college bar in Baton Rouge circa Spring, 1965. First drunk, casually muttering to no one in particular: “Beware the Ides of March!” To which his buddy, only half paying attention with his back half-turned, replies: “Yeah, they’ll F**K ya up every time.” LOL!
Since the President seems to invoke the words and deeds of Lincoln at almost every opportunity it might serve him and his administration to recall his immortal words from his second inaugural address:
…let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan…
What in the world can they possibly be thinking?
How can anyone, of any political bent, support this as it has been presented in the press. I read comments online posted in response to the Washington Post article on this proposal yesterday and the most strident comments in opposition were posted by his otherwise supporters. The condemnation was, a first that I can recall, universal. There were exactly zero support for this crass example of political and moral tone deafness.
One wonders if they really are as incompetent as they seem so hell bent on proving by their actions.
Two words: Income Redistribution.
Set aside the economic puzzlement that this presents.
What about the moral obligation of a nation to support it’s servicemen and women when they are injured in the line of duty.
Towns and cities do it for their police and firefighters. Even in the soulless private sector, if you are injured on the job – workers’ compensation steps in.
We are talking about workers’ comp for our military. They are employees of the United States and as such should be honored the same way that employees in the private sector are.
To do less is unthinkable – and right up P.BO’s alley unfortunately.
Two more words: Imputed Income.
Plus he gets to weaken the forces while our enemies are paid. He could save $900M by not wasting it on the “Palestinians”…..
It’s amazing what happens when a rapacious Congress and really smart people which too much time on their hands who have read too much Marx ( like smart-ass 26 yr-old single guy tax-lawyers on the Congressional tax-writing committees) get to playing around with the concept of “imputed income.”
Under Clinton, if you remember, the idea was floated that if one owned one’s own home and local median rents were higher than one’s mortgage payment, than one should be taxed on the “imputed” income differential that represented you living rent subsidized on that portion of the rent you don’t have to pay that represented what the economic worth of your home would be if you had to rent it.
Like-wise the idea was once bandied about that one should impute interest to corporate contributions to funded non-qualified deferred compensation plans.
People got quiet, however when it was pointed out no one imputes interest to FICA, major medical or pension contributions. Why, if you imputed interest to pension contributions by some of the Fortune 500 companies you’d get a number so big it’d blow your mind. It would be bigger than the book value of the entire company in some cases. But that’s what happens when idealistic, young, single utopians who have never lived in the real world, never met a payroll nor own any real assets, except perhaps a car (Perhaps–lots of bikes on Capital Hill–and I ain’t talkin’ motor) get their hands on a little power via their ability to shape the tax-code.
Although it is hard to look beyond the lunacy and hypocrisy of this, you don’t have to look far in the current military to see the setup for this move.
When you move your household goods, damage claims must first go to your private insurance before DoD will review your claim.
When you go to get medical care on active duty, you are required to list private health insurance which will be billed first prior to TRICARE taking on the claim.
Someone in the accounting department got a NAM-equivalent for the hypothetical savings (which is likely quite opposite the meager actualized savings) and now in their time of great ideas this cubicle-trolls idiocy is adopted by the powers that be.
Maybe when the main stream media covers the return of coffins at Dover, they can get some footage of the families having to pay in full before getting receipt of their dead son or daughter.
Guys/gals/genial host – might I suggest neh- implore each and every one of us to besiege our elected Representatives and Senators on this issue. Every one of them has an email listing. Pls take the time to actively direct our righteous indignation to those that can stop this assault. BOH won’t – he simply doesn’t care, and he also knows that the quicker he acts on things like VA medical issue, armed pilots in airliners (didja know he stopped that program too?), the DOD budget, gays in the military,the bailout, HR 875 (go read THAT one) etc, the less time his opposition has to mount an effective defense. Goes along the line of a bad plan violently executed …
Yes, G-Man, saw the bit about the armed pilots also. Unbelievable–but does go along with their pathological fear of allowing anyone to have access to guns. And your right about the bad plan violently executed–it’s the John Thompson Hoya theory of basketball–everyone foul every second of every minute–the refs can’t call ‘em all and it totally disrupts the other team’s offense.
Lex … I have only one argument with your cogent essay above. You say that Obama is “a very intelligent man with keen political instincts.” This is really not true, if you judge him by his actions since his inauguration. He is using the Saul Alinsky playbook to disassemble the American economy with frightening results, results which don’t seem to disturb him at all. He has mis-stepped badly on his relations with our long-term allies [apparently he has fired all the diplomatic protocol experts who have traditionally been a fixture in Washington and the White House and have protected our tyro presidents from stupid, harmful mistakes]. And he has conflated two major areas, health care and the Social Security Administration, as crises along with our financial meltdown. One can just picture him saying, “Oh well, we might as well get all these things accomplished at once, since we’ve got this nice financial crisis to take care of,” even though neither health care nor Social Security is an immediate emergency, and the financial crisis is.
These are not the actions of a reasonable, realistic, intelligent man. But then, Barack isn’t any of those things. He’s a beginner, and an overly conceited one at that.
Marianne
The “Tea Party” beckons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M0ZOMXPzQ0
b2
Here’s what I had to say:
http://randomactsofpatriotism.blogspot.com/2009/03/obamas-promises-to-veterans.html
Lex, Please don’t resist commenting on issues such as this. While I refuse to cede my thought processes to you (or any other), I’ve come to respect the commentary and analysis from you and many of the other regulars here. They assist me in formulating opinions by virtue of different experience and education as well as just points of view. While I may not agree with them always, I value their input.
Cheers
I would suggest to the good POTUS that he has some of his staff look into the story of the “Bonus Army” and what sort of a ruckus that was. If he thinks that that affair was a disaster for the government, wait until he tries to push this issue through.
We had between 20 and 30 thousand veterans descend on Washing ton two years ago St Paddy’s day. That was to protect our monuments and put the lie to ANSWER and the other leftist scum.
If POTUS goes through with this POS idea, he’ll have way more veterans than that down there, and how do you think the Press will respond when rank upon rank of older veterans, in wheelchairs, and walkers, and with canes and crutches, parade in front of the White House and the Congress.
I actually hope he calls out bluff and tries to implement this thing. If he does, he’ll guarentee the WH & Congress will be in conservative hands for the forseeable future.
It’s outrageous. Is it is even more outrageous than the Army’s custom of billing its wounded soldiers for every bit of missing gear that they had with them when they got blown up, eviscerated, evacuated to an aide station and then transferred to a hospital stateside? “Let’s see private, where is your expensive M16? What happened to the 3 grenades you were issued and 120 rounds of 5.56 ammo? Where is your body armor; the stuff’s not cheap you know? Kevlar helmet? And, oh my, it seems we also issued you NVGs which you will be paying a pretty penny to replace….” It wasn’t that long ago that this what you could look forward to while getting better in hospital.
what you refer to as “a custom” could more correctly be labeled “urban myth extrapolated from a miniscule handful of anecdotes”.
did something stupid like that ever happen? yes.
was that policy/plan/tradition/custom? hell NO.
RetRsvMike,
My dad spent 26 years on active duty with the Army. I deployed several times for and with the Army. I watched this process happen. What service is it that routinely “locks down” returning battalions or companies because specialized issued gear is “missing” and nobody is going home until this unit, fresh back from combat ops in Iraq or Afghanistan “finds” it and turns it in.
You may think it an urban myth but if the Quartermasters at Fort Leonard Wood can track me down 8 months after the fact and insist on my prompt return of the gear that they issued me I have full faith and confidence that the wounded soldiers really did get letters from the various Army outfitting quartermaster depots demanding prompt return of the gear or a check.
At this level it’s a bureaucracy. The Quartermasters don’t deploy with the troops they issued the gear to, all they know is that it has not been returned.
You guys are thinking too hard.
Open up a copy of Rand’s semi-autobiographical We The Living.
Note the scene where the heroine passes a legless veteran of the Romanov dynasty wearing a combat decoration for heroism begging in the street.
Heroism and sacrifice in the service of the prior regime? That’s the definition of anti social behavior in the new regime. It needs to be punished and publicly discredited.
Its all been done before.
I’m with AW1. Name the date and lets organize
Might I suggest May 25, in this year otherwise known as Memorial Day. There already is sizable contingent in DC for Rolling Thunder, most, if not all, participants likely to support opposition to this policy.
Kipling had seen this before, you know?
————————————————-
The Last of the Light Brigade
There were thirty million English who talked of England’s might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.
They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four !
They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, “Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites.”
They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant’s order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.
They strove to stand to attention, to straighen the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.
The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and “Beggin’ your pardon,” he said,
“You wrote o’ the Light Brigade, sir. Here’s all that isn’t dead.
An’ it’s all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin’ the mouth of hell;
For we’re all of us nigh to the workhouse, an’ we thought we’d call an’ tell.
“No, thank you, we don’t want food, sir; but couldn’t you take an’ write
A sort of ‘to be continued’ and ‘see next page’ o’ the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an’ couldn’t you tell ‘em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now.”
The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with “the scorn of scorn.”
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.
O thirty million English that babble of England’s might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children’s children are lisping to “honour the charge they made – ”
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!
“Heroism and sacrifice in the service of the prior regime? That’s the definition of anti-social behavior in the new regime. It needs to be punished and publicly discredited” ——-Rellag
“The military stories that we can tell are of a society that is just as gone with the wind as the Confederacy, and it will never return because our current society and civilization hates that past and is ashamed of it. This will increase as post-modernism eats further into the body politic.”
——–Quartermaster, 16 Mar 09
Obama and his minions–Holder, et al, represent the perfect example of all those who would erase all evidence of the society that those who post here hold dear–and throw it down the memory hole while welding the cover tightly shut. Whether it be free speech, “hate crimes,”rights of gun possession, race relations, whatever; the objective of the Obama administration is, I am convinced, one of consciously setting about to enact the requisite rules & regulations so as to make the views held, and life-styles practiced by, anyone such as ourselves, in the final analysis–illegal.
There’s many reasons why Kipling is the warriors poet. This is one of them.
Thanks, Tim, for sharing this. Before, I was just upset. Now, after reading this, I’m pissed.
Byron, I’m not about to get into a pissing match with you, my stream is like a 2″ fire hose under full pressure.
Now, to get to the issue, I’m 100% Totally and Permanently Service Connected Disabled. The insurance companies will not insure me. Please understand, the VA will not be billing the Veteran, but will bill the Veteran’s or spouse’s health insurance company.
Yes, I receive VA health care.
IMHO, this should be considered as a cost of war.
I would point out that, while the government is going to stop paying for what they broke, there is NO mention of kicking people off MEDICAID. So, the government won’t pay to fix people with combat injuries, but if you have emphysema from smoking multiple packs of cigarettes each day, you’re more than covered.
Out-fricken-standing.
It’s happened before in earlier English history, Byron. The veterans of Waterloo, those who didn’t die on the battlefield but were still injured, came back to England and many had to beg on the street for bread. Many die3d after their return, of starvation and neglect, before the Parliament took some notice and built some hospitals for them. Neither of our countries has a sterling record of protection of our warriors.
But I had thought we were maybe making some progress. Until now.
Marianne
Time wasted is the most valuable commodity we have lost. Or as the noted poet G-man has said before:
On the Plains of Hesitation
Lie the bones of countless thousands
Who, while hesitating, died.
Pray that we don’t join their ranks.
OT but related. Fed just announced $1.2 Trillion in more stimulus efforts. The fine print reveals plans for the FED to buy $300B in long tern Treasury bonds.
I’m no expert at all but doesn’t the FED buying T bills basically mean they are now printing money to buy the government’s own debt? I mean the FED doesn’t actually have any money it doesn’t print so we are loaning ourselves money we just printed in the back room.
Of course the FED can do this without Congressional legislation so it doesn’t get debated or analyzed. Watch the inflation figures they just started devaluing he currency. I’m pretty sure that’s how they plan on paying off this debt…I just wish I knew who “they” are.
Looks like Obama backed off the plan. At least that is what he is saying. Now.
Frankly, I don’t trust him, or a single person around him. This sort of scheme WILL be back, buried in the bowels of some massive “must pass immediately without reading” bill to spend billions.
Remember, this “screw the vets” initiative was being worked on at the same time the gracious and charming and caring Mrs. Obama was off on a highly publicized visit sucking up to miltiary families.
These folks cannot be trusted to do the right thing. About ANYTHING! EVER!
May God bless our nation, we sure need some extra help now.
It’s been proven beyond the slightest doubt that every proposal, every program, every statement of POTUS now comes with an expiration date.
I will never believe a thing he or any member of his staff ever says. His word is worthless.
According to “DAV website and the VFW website”, the President has changed course. The debate is over.
Relag @18 sez:
Done… here. In progress, as we speak