Shinseki’s appearance in Congress

Stars and Stripes writes this morning about VA Secretary Eric Shinseki at the House and Senate veterans affairs committees this week. Shinseki bragged about the amount of money the new budget pours into the veteran healthcare system;

Obama’s VA budget outline, with full details promised by late April, would raise VA spending to $112.8 billion in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. That’s an increase of $15 billion, or 15 percent, over the current budget.

“This is the largest dollar and percentage increase ever requested by a president for veterans,” Shinseki told lawmakers.

Sweet, huh? Not only that, Obama and Shinseki want to enroll veterans that don’t even need VA care;

The plan allows the VA health care system to enroll up to 550,000 new Priority Group 8 veterans by 2013. These are veterans who have no service-connected ailments and have incomes deemed adequate based on family size and geographic location.

And lifting the remaining portions of “concurrent receipt” – the absurd practice of reducing military retiree’s check by the amount of their disability checks from the VA. In essence, paying ourselves our own disability payments.

Obama’s defense and VA budgets also call for a gradual lifting of what remains of the ban on concurrent receipt of both military retirement and VA disability compensation for disabled retirees. The next step would occur in 2010 with concurrent receipt allowed for the most seriously disabled veterans forced to retire short of 20 years.

So why would the Obama Administration begin investigating third party reimbursement for VA treatment of service-connected injuries and illness? To her credit (I never thought I’d write those words) Patty Murray says ‘no’.

“Veterans with service-connected injuries have already paid by putting their lives on the line. … We should take care of those injuries completely,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

Though she recognized that no formal proposal had yet reached Congress, Murray told Shinseki, “I can assure you it will be dead on arrival if it lands here.”

Shinseki said the issue is solely about financing, and not about continuing to deliver superior care.

“That is not discussable,” Shinseki said.

Steve Robertson, director of legislation for the American Legion, told senators he was appalled to learn of the insurance proposal. The Legion and 10 other veterans groups sent a joint letter to Obama criticizing the idea.

“I could not believe that anybody would ever think that Great West or Prudential or Aetna or any insurance company has an obligation to take care of the men and women who have service-connected disabilities. None of those insurance companies … put us into harm’s way and shouldn’t be held responsible for health care,” Robertson said.

Despite what a great idea Shinseki thinks this is, I wonder if anyone in the Administration has thought about what insurance would cost a veteran with a service connected pre-existing condition. It could affect them in the job market, too, since the Left has tied health care to employers. The thing is; if the Obama Administration isn’t considering tinkering with our health care, why are these discussions even being held? If Shinseki really thinks about veterans first like he claims in his open letter to all veterans, why aren’t these ideas nipped in the bud before the VSOs and Congress even hear about them?

Veteran health care is an integral part of our national defense – beret salesmen shouldn’t be the ones standing between those who want to interupt the funding and the veterans.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Liberals suck