This is the entire text of the story as I read it. This could easily be to hot a topic for the round table. Maybe it should be in The Politics Place instead. All I can say is it is a hell of a way to start my day, seeing this crap in the news.
Fire away!
WASHINGTON - An Obama administration proposal to bill veterans' private insurance companies for combat-related injuries has prompted veterans groups to condemn the plan as unethical and powerful lawmakers on Capitol Hill to promise their opposition.
Nevertheless, the White House confirmed Tuesday that the idea remains under consideration, and a meeting to discuss it further is scheduled for Thursday between chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and leaders of veterans groups.
The proposal, intended to save the Department of Veterans Affairs $530 million a year, would authorize the VA to bill private insurance companies, or so-called third-party billing, for the treatment of injuries and medical conditions related to military service, such as amputations, post-traumatic stress disorder and other battle injuries. The VA already pursues third-party billing for non-service-related conditions.
Veterans groups said the change would abrogate the government's responsibility to care for the war-wounded. 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.
Lawmakers explicitly ruled out the proposal Tuesday in budget recommendations from the Senate and House Veterans Affairs committees.
The chairman of the Senate committee, Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, said a majority of the committee members rejected the plan as fundamentally unfair.
"America's veterans and their families pay the true cost of war every day, and we must pay for the care and benefits they have earned. I look forward to working with my colleagues and the administration to pass a budget worthy of their service," Akaka said in a statement.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a senior member of both the Veterans Affairs and Budget committees, warned Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki last week that the idea would be "dead on arrival," and she vowed Tuesday that any budget containing the VA provision "is 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."
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday that the Obama administration has not yet made "the final ... decision on third-party billing as it relates to service-related injuries."
At the same time, Gibbs noted that the administration is seeking an 11 percent increase in discretionary spending in the VA budget, a decision lawmakers and veterans groups have praised. "This president takes very seriously the needs of our wounded warriors that have given so much to protect our freedom on battlefields throughout the world," Gibbs said at a White House news conference.
The VA and the Office of Management and Budget did not respond to requests for more details on the proposal.
Veterans groups described the plan as a puzzling political misstep by the new administration in its relations with the 25 million Americans who have served in the military. President Barack Obama heard firsthand about such objections Monday when he met with leaders of the groups at the White House.
"To ask veterans to save $500 million in a (VA) budget of over $100 billion is not only bad policy, it is bad politics," said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, who attended the meeting.
Another problem, critics said, is that the proposal could hurt the employment opportunities for wounded veterans, particularly with small businesses.
"A small company is not going to want to take on the burden of increased premiums" by hiring a wounded veteran, said Craig Roberts, media relations manager for the American Legion.
Details of the proposal remained unclear Tuesday, and a spokesman for the health-insurance industry said its impact remained uncertain. "We are going to carefully evaluate any proposal that is made," said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade association that represents the health industry.
Lawmakers and veterans advocates said the VA could save $500 million by simply collecting from private insurers all that it is authorized to bill for non-service injuries each year.
More broadly, the issue underscores a significant challenge confronting the administration: ballooning health-care costs for veterans and active military members taking up an ever-larger share of VA and Pentagon budgets.
It is uncertain how many of the estimated 25 million Americans who have served in the military would be impacted by the proposed change, which would affect only those with private health insurance. As many as 7 million veterans are enrolled in the VA's health-care program and about 5 million use VA facilities each year.
Other experts said it reflects the broader dilemma of how to increase cost-sharing for medical care in comprehensive programs such as that of the VA. "There has been no change in cost-sharing features for 10 or 12 or more years," said Bill Winkenwerder, the Pentagon's former top health official, who now runs a private health-strategy and consulting firm in the Washington area. "That is what is most responsible for driving up the cost of those programs to the government," he said.
Still, any proposals to increase cost-sharing "tend not to be very popular politically, especially at this time," Winkenwerder said.
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