{"id":14034,"date":"2009-08-31T07:42:21","date_gmt":"2009-08-31T12:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=14034"},"modified":"2009-08-31T07:42:21","modified_gmt":"2009-08-31T12:42:21","slug":"buyer-healthcare-bill-as-it-is-will-penalize-veterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=14034","title":{"rendered":"Buyer: Healthcare bill as it is will penalize veterans"},"content":{"rendered":"

1stCavRVN11B sent us a link the other day to a Townhall.com<\/a> article by Congressman Stephen Buyer, who is also the ranking member of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and a full colonel<\/a> in the Army Reserves. Buyer claims that, as it stands this minute, the healthcare bill in the House will penalize veterans;<\/p>\n

[T]he House bill as it stands today still would not, repeat, would not exempt veterans who receive VA healthcare from the punitive 2.5 percent tax that the bill would impose for failure to have \u201cacceptable coverage<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The current House bill would also create a disincentive to hiring members of the National Guard and Reserve by levying an eight percent payroll tax penalty against employers that do not provide continuous health coverage to its employees. Continuous coverage for National Guard and Reserve members is not always necessary because they frequently transition to and from active duty where they have access to TRICARE.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Buyer claims that two of his amendments to fix problems in the bill have been accepted but that he has four other amendments pending. From his website<\/a>;<\/p>\n

The four amendments Congressman Buyer and Chairman Waxman plan to work to reach an agreement are: 1) prevent veterans from being subjected to a 2.5 percent tax because they may be enrolled in a VA health plan; 2) exempting the Guard and Reserve employers from the eight percent penalty tax; 3) allow VA reimbursements from third party medical insurers; and 4) exempting the Guard and Reserve members from the 2.5 percent penalty tax.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, someone keeps coming around to say this is “scare tactics” from Republicans to scare veterans – yet the loopholes exist. The people who call them “scare tactics” weren’t around when a Democrat Congress doubled co-pays for active duty members who used civilian hospitals because they were on recruiter duty or in ROTC instructor groups as well as retirees. They weren’t around when dental and eye coverage for dependents ended. Or when retirees over 65 was moved from Tricare to Medicare.<\/p>\n

Many of the things the politicians want to change get nipped in the bud – but only because we’re vigilant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1stCavRVN11B sent us a link the other day to a Townhall.com article by Congressman Stephen Buyer, … Buyer: Healthcare bill as it is will penalize veterans<\/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":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veteran-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14034","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=14034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}