When I enlisted during that little tiff in SE Asia back in August, 72, I was assured by a smiling recruiter that my enlistment would result in free medical care, "head to foot," for the rest of my life.
Excepting that my "free" care has cost me, and will continue to cost me, tens of thousands of dollars, I am entitled to said care for life.
But it isn't all that it could, or should, be.
Yes, there have been times when I've had to wait weeks or months for care. Yes, that care has not always worked... even now, I suffer from a failed operation on my right hand from last October. Yes, on those occasions when I've had to go to the emergency room at Pill Hill in Portland, I have had to wait several hours to be seen due to inadequate facilities and staff.
But I also acknowledge that I have received care that has kept me alive. It is a fact that I must also keep in mind.
I also have to acknowledge that when I buy medications of the generic variety, I have to pay $27 for what I, or anyone else, can get at Fred Meyers or Costco or many others for $10.
That stuff adds up.
All of this leads to the utter worthless grandstanding of Obama to "fix" the problems that have festered under his presidency for at least 6 years and for several years before that under presidents of both parties.
The edicts of Obama make no difference in the lives of the end user. They are far too little, far too late. And let's not forget that one of Obama's earliest VA scams was to force our wounded to
pay medical premiums with private insurers to have THEM treat their wounds.
The leftist rag infesting our community, however, puts it in these terms, a product of the typically America-hating non-serving scum like, come to think of it, our current president.
While Obama's policy speech hints at
necessary changes, it also leaves several pertinent questions
unanswered. Among them is how congressional Republicans will react.
These are the same Republicans who plan to file a lawsuit against the
president for his use of executive action in delaying a portion of the
Affordable Care Act. Will they voice the same concerns about executive
action when it is designed to assist one of their party's core
constituencies? The guess is that the silence will be deafening.
The utter, rank hypocrisy of this kind of garbage is why the democratian is a rag to be despised along with those who run it and work there.
First and foremost, ANY time the president circumvents the Constitution of the United States, he should be smacked upside his political head for it. While Obama has made it clear that he views our Constitution as his own particular brand of two-ply toilet paper, ANY time a president fails his job like this one has, there should be a price to pay for that: And if, as the moron who wrote this stupidity suggests, this executive order does that?
Then yes: he should be sued to put a stop to it.
In fact, Obama should be impeached over his multiple counts of high crimes and misdemeanors in office as the Constitutional limitations on that office are meaningless to him and, apparently, meaningless to Congress.
Meanwhile, when our own Ridgefield Barbie and the rest of Congress voted to insult and defame and harm our retired veterans, including those disabled by cutting their retirements... where was this faux outragfe the partisan scumbag who wrote this pap expresses here?
That question, however, is merely a piece
of smirk-inducing inside politics, the kind that will draw attention
mostly from partisan policy wonks.
Like, perhaps, the scumbag who wrote this editorial?
Of more concern is the role the government
can play in rebuilding trust with America's veterans. As Joe Davidson
wrote in The Washington Post: "Mistakes can be corrected. Bad service
can be improved. Broken trust, however, can be difficult to fix.
President Obama is trying to rebuild confidence in the Department of
Veteran Affairs."
Really? And how, exactly, does this minor league grandstanding that accomplishes nothing do that?
The government has, in large measure, failed it's veteran population. The rag, however, insists on puffing up both Obama and there bogus canard that "government" is making it all better.
Along those lines, some additional
recent data suggest that the plight of veterans has improved. Federal
reports show that the number of homeless veterans has fallen by 33
percent since 2010, and the number of homeless veterans sleeping in the
street, as opposed to shelters, has dropped 40 percent during that time.
Wrote Ben Casselman of FiveThirtyEight.com: "What's more, it's falling
at least in large part due to government intervention. … In recent
years, the federal government has vastly increased spending on housing
assistance for veterans, mostly in the form of direct housing vouchers."
That
represents the sort of obligation the federal government has to its
veterans. With the nation spending most of the past 13 years engaged in
war, those obligations will continue to be paramount and costly for
decades to come. Living up to them will require diligent action.
The promises made to those of us who serve (And it's of note that no one in the rag's newsroom or editorial staff appears to have bothered to wear our uniform) have not come close to being kept, nor will they be.
Pointing to a single, questionable success among a minute number of veterans (There are millions of us who are, in fact, not homeless who also should have our promises kept) indicates nothing, restores nothing, builds trust in nothing.
When a veteran doesn't have to wait in a VA emergency room for 6 hours to get two stitches in a cut... when being hospitalized under this "free" medical care for 17 hours doesn't cost $1100... when we don't have to wait months for surgery, or die waiting outright like so many have... then the rift in trust might begin to heal.
Until then, we need to remember that this nebulous government that the rag seems to worship in this editorial is what brought us to this in the first place.
And no one responsible has been held accountable.
And there will be no trust until they are.
Meanwhile, leave the partisan bullshit out of it. There's enough blame to go around. And no, the president is not above the law, even when he breaks it to confuse motion with action... like he did here... and that the rag was fooled doesn't mean that those of us who served and who depend on this "free" medical care that costs us so much were as stupid as that.
