Fausta’s Blog

From the administration that’s fixated on universal health care: a proposal to bill veterans’ private insurance companies for treatment of combat-related injuries,
Veterans Groups Denounce Private Insurance Proposal

the White House confirmed yesterday that the idea remains under consideration, and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and leaders of veterans groups are scheduled to meet tomorrow to discuss it further.

The proposal — intended to save the Department of Veterans Affairs $530 million a year — would authorize VA to bill private insurance companies for the treatment of injuries and medical conditions related to military service, such as amputations, post-traumatic stress disorder and other battle wounds. VA already pursues such third-party billing for conditions that are not service-related.

This is absolutely outrageous.

The reason?

More broadly, the issue underscores a significant challenge confronting the administration: ballooning health-care costs for veterans and active military members taking up an ever-larger share of VA and Pentagon budgets.

On the one hand, the government has tripled the national debt; on the other hand, veterans’ health care and taxing healthcare benefits.

What this tells me is that the much-touted universal healthcare proposal will be heavy on rationing. The veterans, however, should fight this latest proposal and insist that the media make the public aware that this is going on.

Writing about it:
This Ain’t Hell
David Rehbein, national commander of the American Legion, writing at the Wall Street Journal
Moe Lane at Red State
Blatherings
Darleen at Protein Wisdom
Day By Day (click on cartoon to to enlarge)

I’ll add more links throughout the day. This proposal is so awful, it’s embarrassing to think anyone would even bring it up in the first place.

UPDATE

Sam Stein and Ryan Grim at the HuffPo, via Instapundit
John Hinderaker: “Free” Medical Care For Everyone Except…
BlackFive

More
Tipping point, Thank you for your service, now pay up
Blue Star Chronicles
Nice Deb
FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog
Ed Driscoll
Memeorandum
Via Ed, Jon Stewart:

At a meeting with veterans’ groups on Capitol Hill, Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) said:

President Obama listened to the genuine concerns expressed by the veteran service organizations regarding the option of billing service-connected injuries to veterans’ insurance companies.

Based on the respect President Obama has for veterans and the principle concerns of our veteran leaders, the president made the decision that combat wounds should not be billed through their insurance policies.

Of course, if President Obama really had all that “respect” for veterans’ and for “the principle concerns of our veteran leaders,” wouldn’t he have realized (or had one of those “veteran leaders” tell him) what an outrageously boneheaded idea charging veterans for treatment of wounds suffered in combat was?

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Tags: American Legion, Fausta's blog, veterans, Veterans Administration

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 8:26 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Blog Talk Radio, health care, healthcare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.