That Doesn't Sound Right! (Vets to Use their Own Insurance)

**jahwarrior72** · March 18th, 2009, 06:05 AM

i saw this story on the Daily Show last night. i had to check for myself, just to be sure. i...am...sickened.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/natio...y/1092512.html

Veterans get another White House meeting to discuss benefit cuts
By DAVID GOLDSTEIN
The Star’s Washington correspondent

Gerald Herbert

Angry advocates for veterans will return to the White House on Thursday to try and talk the Obama administration out of cutting health benefits.

The plan has ignited a political firestorm in the veteran’s community, and a meeting Monday with President Barack Obama failed to tamp it down. But the same veterans groups that met with Obama have been asked to come back to meet with his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, for more discussions.

The plan to save money by cutting veterans’ benefits remains sketchy, but the Obama administration is weighing whether to make veterans use private insurance to pay for treatment of combat injuries and other health problems that resulted from their military service.

Veterans currently are responsible only for health-care costs that are unrelated to their time in the military, with some exceptions.

Several veterans’ advocates suggested that the White House was unprepared for the political backlash to its plan from veterans and their supporters on Capitol Hill and might be looking for a graceful exit.

“Why pick a fight that’s going to consume time and energy that doesn’t need to happen?” asked Doug Vollmer, a lobbyist for the Paralyzed Veterans of America.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said “no decisions have been made” about changing benefits for veterans. Gibbs said they “can be assured that the president understands any concerns that they would have.”

Obama on Monday told the advocates that the government could save $540 million by making veterans use private insurance for all medical care.

But to veterans and their advocates, government-financed health coverage is their “third rail” of politics. They believe that upon enlistment, the government pledged lifetime coverage for injuries sustained on the battlefield or elsewhere.

Reversing that “cuts to the quick of the covenant between the people and those who take the step forward, pledging life and limb, often at great cost, in defense of the United States,” said Rick Weidman, a lobbyist for the Vietnam Veterans of America.

Still, veterans’ advocates said they were open to discussing alternatives, which is likely to be the topic Thursday. One option could be to have some veterans use their private insurance for treatment of service-related injuries, but without requiring co-payments.

Another option could be allowing the Department of Veterans Affairs to bill Medicare for an eligible veteran’s coverage. Currently, if a veteran eligible for both Medicare and the VA and uses the VA, the agency is not allowed to bill Medicare.

“This, we believe, would more easily meet the president’s financial goal,” David Rehbein, the commander of the American Legion, said in a statement

Apart from the tempest over private insurance, several veterans’ advocates said that Obama has been a supporter of their concerns. His proposed budget for 2010 of nearly $113 billion for Veterans Affairs was more than $1 billion more than the plan they had been pushing.

But many said they were surprised by the ham-handedness of the private insurance effort because it seemed that no one in either the White House or the VA took into consideration how veterans would react.

Or the Congress, where several members have called the plan “dead on arrival.”

Paul Rieckhoff, the executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, likened it to the problems Bill Clinton faced in 1993 at the outset of his presidency when he proposed the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about gays in the military.

“The president needs to drop this,” Rieckhoff said. “The longer we wait, the more it hurts his relations with the VSOs (Veterans Service Organizations) and with vets, this is a no-brainer. … We don’t understand why he’s picking this fight.”

To reach David Goldstein, call 202-383-6105, or send e-mail to dgoldstein@mcclatchydc.com.

Posted on Tue, Mar. 17, 2009 10:15 PM