This plan, which should be aborted, wouldn't leave them hanging as I understand it. It only seeks to make private insurance the primary insurer instead of the Federal government. Basically all it will do, from a finance perspective, is shift the cost burden onto the private sector and remove it from the government books. Rather than use our tax dollars to fund veterans care we'll be paying for it through increased premiums. That frees up our tax dollars for other projects, and odds are we probably won't approve of how they're spent there.
The other thing it does is complicates the lives of veterans. There's no need, or excuse, for that. They signed up for service and did their job. We owe it to them to take care of them.
Private insurance, if the vet has any,
already covers VA care for non-service-related injury and illness. All moral objections (and they are obviously huge) aside, this wouldn't work anyway. If I got injured on the job, my medical insurance, provided by my employer would refuse the claim, and refer it to the employers umbrella accident/liability coverage anyway.
Heck, I go to the ER with a locked up back, Aetna sends me a form from a law-firm where I have to attest it's just a random injury, and not some employer's or businesses fault.
What I find
astonishing is that Obama and Rahm Emmanuel would even voice this plan to anyone. Again, leaving moral objections over our obligation as a nation to our wounded vets out of it, how
stupid can they be to publicly float this to anyone, much less the leaders of a bunch of vet groups? Even Reid/Pelosi are smart enough to know that "hurting vets" is political suicide, and Congressional Democrats have loudly said any such proposal is DOA, to the point of it deep-sixing the entire budget.
I think the Dems are having a string of come-to-Jesus moments as just how vapid Obama & Co. really are. As they bring their faces out of the earmark trough of the porkulous bill and actually look around even they are shocked.
Obama and his inner circle are clearly running their mouths faster than they can think, they don't know how to leverage their staff to research the political ramifications of potential policy decisions, or even how "Washington works", with their own party in charge. It would be laughable, except for the fact this is the guy who's going to negotiate with other countries too.