Thank you for your service...

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Now, Pay up!

Obama has presented a new health care plan for soldiers and veterans wounded during active duty. Pay for it yourself. Rather than the government bearing the weight of its wounded soldiers, Obama is proposing that the VA look to a soldier's private insurance for reimbursement.

In the process of attempting to recoup $540 million dollars, Obama is quickly losing what little face he had with the military.

The LA Times has an article that is quite critical of Obama's plan and quotes two Democrat Senators that have vowed that any such proposal will be dead on arrival.


Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a senior member of the Veterans Affairs and Budget committees, warned Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki last week that the idea would be "dead on arrival," and she vowed Tuesday that any budget containing the VA provision was "not going to pass."

"The VA has an obligation to pay for service-related care, and they should not be nickel-and-diming vets in the process," she said in an interview. "This proposal means that family members will be hurt because, if a vet meets the maximum [benefit amount] for their insurance, their wife and kids would not be able to get insurance [benefits] any more. . . . God forbid a wounded vet from Iraq has a wife who gets breast cancer."

In addition, Veteran groups are not taking this without a fight, and Obama would show some semblance of intelligence if he took the time to actually listen to our men and women in uniform.

Veterans groups said the change would abrogate the government's responsibility to care for the war-wounded. And they expressed concern that the new policy would make employers less willing to hire veterans for fear of the cost of insuring them, and that insurance benefits for veterans' families would also be jeopardized.

What in the world is Obama thinking? I've heard numerous theories, ranging from, "He is an idiot," to, "He is attempting to disassemble our current military in order to replace it with a military loyal to him alone (The 'he is the next Hitler' theory)."

I tend to think reality lies somewhere between these theories. One of Obama's plans is to create socialized medicine. The only way he is going to make this happen is if private insurance becomes so unaffordable, that there is nowhere for the middle class to turn, but to the federal government. By throwing a $540 million debit on the private insurance companies, Obama is ensuring the rise in premiums. In addition, private insurance companies may refuse to cover the pre-existing conditions received during active duty. In this case, military men and women (and their families) may be the first group forced to accept coverage under Obama's health care system to be.
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