BC,
I’m only going to say this once. Jason Leopold of truthout.org simply cannot be trusted as a source. http://www.cjr.org/politics/jason_leopold_caught_sourceles.php. As you read the “article”, re-posted at someone else’s personal blog (not an organization of vets, jut one guy), you see the point of view of the “reporter” shining through. Just because his writing appears to agree with you does not make him unbiased.
Attempting to hide blatant partisan hackery behind an innocent looking link is an easy way to tell if someone is intellectually dishonest in their argument.
Oh, and really like this paragraph from Leopold:
His proposal for the agency would fund a radical overhaul of VA’s technological infrastructure and aims to eliminate an average six-month wait to have disability claims processed. As of September 2008, 330,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have filed disability claims to the VA, according to the agency. Yet, 54,000 are still waiting for the VA to confirm their claims were received. The average wait for a disability claim is more than six months.
This is exactly the “regulatory/red tape/insurance BS that has made our hospital emergency waiting rooms and corridors cautionary tales for the rest of the industrialized world” you rail against, and it’s the government providing the care. Is this the quality of care and responsiveness we can expect from universal healthcare, I don’t want it. I mean, if there are this many problems with government-provided care in a small cross section of Americans, how exactly is it going to be better when everyone is on it?
Now, fixing what’s broken is a noble cause, and I applaud it. They even want to include more veterans who now don’t qualify as they make more than $30k/yr and have no service related disabilities. But why include them, while taking current vets effectively off the rolls by billing for service-connected problems? That doesn’t make sense, and I’m glad Obama stopped considering it.
V/R,
Jeff Weimer
http://navy.togetherweserved.com/profile/159924
