Marines: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy. Especially if the Target is the President’s Stupid Ideas.

March 19, 2009

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From Rees Lloyd:

After sharp blasts back from The American Legion, other veterans organizations, and individual outraged veterans nationwide, President Barack Hussein Obama dropped his plan to bill private insurance companies for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries.
After a follow-up meeting with heads of veterans organizations today, The White House announced Obama was dropping his unprecedented policy of requiring veterans to use their own private insurance for treatment by the VA of disabilities resulting from their military service to the nation, a betrayal the nation’s time-honored commitment to provide medical care for “those who have borne the battle,” as Abraham Lincoln said of veterans of the Civil War whose service preserved the nation and freed the slaves.
“We are glad that President Obama listened to the strong objections raised by The American Legion and veterans everywhere about this unfair plan,” said National Commander David K Rehbein of The American Legion, the largest wartime veterans organization in the world with 1.6-million members in more than 14,000 Posts. “We thank the administration for its proposed increase in the VA budget and we are always available to assist by providing guidance to ensure a veterans health care system that is worthy of the heroes that use it.”
Rehbein, who had issued a sharply-worded denunciation of Obama’s bill-the-disabled-veteran plan after a White House meeting Monday in which Obama stated his intent to go forward with the plan over veterans’ objections, called for a change in Washington to allow veterans who do not have service-connected disabilities but are entitled to VA medical for their military service to use their Medicare benefits at the VA.
“Although we disagreed with the proposal, additional revenue streams are needed by VA,” Rehbein said. “I strongly encourage Congress and the administration to allow VA to begin billing Medicare for the treatment of Medicare-eligible nonservice-connected veterans. They paid into Medicare for their entire working careers and should be able to use it in the medical system that was built specifically for them.”
Why can’t veterans use their Medicare at the VA? It is a mystery wrapped in an enigma in the deepest regions of the bowels of the governmental mind in Washington, D.C., the same government which allows Medicare to be used by other governmental medical providers, but not the VA. An inquiry will result in a massive dose of unfathomable bureauspeak, making as much sense as the government providing millions of taxpayer dollars to the corrupt ACORN, Obama’s former client, so that it might corrupt the electoral process.
[Rees Lloyd is a longtime civil rights attorney, and an activist in veterans affairs.]
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