{"id":13703,"date":"2009-08-17T06:55:21","date_gmt":"2009-08-17T11:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=13703"},"modified":"2009-08-17T06:55:21","modified_gmt":"2009-08-17T11:55:21","slug":"blue-dogs-and-vsos-saved-vet-health-care-in-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=13703","title":{"rendered":"Blue Dogs and VSOs saved vet health care in House"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those of you skeptics (namely Brandon Friedman, formerly of VoteVets) who said that Democrats wouldn’t harm veteran health care, take a look at this morning’s Wall Street Journal<\/a>;<\/p>\n

We’re still sorting through the health-care deal Henry Waxman struck with Blue Dog Democrats recently, but one 11th-hour revision stands out. Namely, veterans will now be “exempt from the requirements of the legislation.”<\/p>\n

That’s how Mr. Waxman’s staff put it in a memo to reporters earlier this month, announcing amendments that the House Energy and Commerce Committee included before passing the bill 31 to 28. These changes were designed to assuage the “grave concerns” of the American Legion, Amvets and others about how their members could be penalized by new taxes and insurance regulations.<\/p>\n

We’re delighted service members will be let off this particular hook, but why doesn’t everyone else warrant the same dispensation? Or to put it another way, Mr. Waxman is conceding that his plan will interfere with all insurance arrangements that aren’t exempted, including private options that are working well. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, see, if the Blue Dogs (and Republicans, btw) hadn’t held out, and if the American Legion and AMVETs hadn’t made such a stink, the Democrat Congress would’ve gone merrily on their way to make veteran healthcare too expensive for most of us. I’d like to think that it was out of ignorance, but I tend to think it was completely thoughtless.<\/p>\n

For decades, Democrats have attempted to fund their attempts to buy political patronage with money meant for veterans and the military. I’ll admit that so far, this administration has been very good to veterans, but that hasn’t come without vigilance as regular readers of this blog know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those of you skeptics (namely Brandon Friedman, formerly of VoteVets) who said that Democrats wouldn’t … Blue Dogs and VSOs saved vet health care in House<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-veteran-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}