White House Steps on VA Landmine

[Pangloss]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/17/obama.veterans/

 

This seems to me to fall under the category of "rookie mistakes". Basically the White House tried to push a plan to have soldier's private health insurance policies pay for their combat injuries. It was a real facepalm moment and VA groups quickly met with the White House and Obama quashed the plan, which was DOA with Congress anyway.

 

Probably what happened is that somebody at the White House tried to push a little harder on the issue of getting these companies to pay for non-service-related injuries, which is a notorious problem -- they tend to try (often successfully) to dodge those costs and get the VA to pay for them, and getting tougher on those payments is a reasonable thing to do. I'm not real clear at the moment on whether these soldiers get the same policies, negotiated by the government directly with private suppliers (like companies do), but according to the CNN article above the veterans do pay premiums on these policies, which means they are THEIR policies, not the government's, which means there is a long-term impact to the individual for charging these companies with combat-related treatment (i.e. higher premiums). And of course combat injuries are clearly not the responsibility of insurers, and the long-term impact on the soldiers' ability to get future insurance would be cast into doubt.

 

Of course the right is already running away with it, and not without merit -- it was an incredibly stupid and ill-conceived notion. But the VA is getting billions more than it asked for in the new budget, so the idea that Obama "hates the troops" is pretty laughable.

 

Expect this to continue to have play amongst moderate conservatives in coming months and years, though. Politically speaking this was a total hand-in-the-cookie-jar moment. Shades of Clinton's first year in office here.

[ecoli]

Of course the private insurers aren't going to pay for it... they know the VA exists and will take care of their soldiers.

 

I wonder, for a moment, if the federal govt didn't have health insurance programs, and soldiers where able choose their plans.

 

Of course the government would still have to pay for it (soldiers are gov't employees and have considerable physical risk) but the logic of the free market would still apply. Obviously, a soldier is going to be paying more than your average Joe... but then again, they already do.

[bascule]

I wonder, for a moment, if the federal govt didn't have health insurance programs, and soldiers where able choose their plans.

 

I think they'd have a tough time finding a good plan.

 

This approach seems somewhat contrary to the administration's overall view on healthcare. I'm not really sure why they attempted it.

[Pangloss]

In reading that CNN article further, it does sound like the soldiers pay premiums on these private policies. Ugh.

 

I really think somebody just screwed the proverbial pooch over in the West Wing. Maybe somebody lost their temper in a phone call with a private insurer who didn't want to pay for flu shots -- "Fine, we'll charge you for the combat injuries too!" -- something along those lines, and then it just spiraled out of control.

 

I don't mean to sound like an apologist -- a screw-up is a screw-up -- but this sort of thing happened a lot in the early days of the Clinton administration too.

[Pangloss]

Just to update this, the plan was officially dropped on Thursday.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/18/vets.insurance/?iref=mpstoryview

[padren]

It came up in another thread regarding Jon Stewart's rarely picking on the left, so I thought I'd throw this in:

 

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=220571&title=That-Can%27t-Be-Right---Veterans%27-Health-Insurance

 

Not that it disspells any arguments as to a general bias in his show - it's just an example of where he does go at both sides.

[swansont]

I seem to recall a clause in a life insurance policy I took out while on active duty that it didn't pay out if my death was a result of war, declared or undeclared. I wonder if health insurance policies have similar clauses — or would, if this had snuck through.