In their trademark hypocritical style, House Republicans are blocking affordable health care for National Guard members and reservists during a war which has caused the Army to fall short on its recruiting goals!
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., has employed a rarely used authority to strike a provision in the committee-passed $441.6 billion defense authorization bill that would have opened the military's Tricare health care system to all National Guard members and reservists. The bill is scheduled for floor consideration Wednesday.
It's fine to debate just how much the military should incentivise enlistment, but affordable National Guard and reservist medical coverage falls far outside the bounds of a simple enlistment incentive. Medical coverage for reservists should be expected, and it's amazing to see anyone - especially the chair of the House Armed Services Committee - oppose it. At a time when the Army feels it's necessary to offer an unheard of 15-month enlistment option, anything that could be considered an incentive - even if it should be a permanent, obvious benefit - should be seriously considered if only for the fact that it may ease some recruitment problems.
-inspired by a post at the Democratic Party Blog
*A reasonable person would agree with one of the two questions here:
1) You either believe in offering reasonable incentives to increase recruitment during this crisis;
2) You believe in offering affordable health care coverage to National Guard members and reservists.
--You can agree with merely one or with both, but agreeing with neither is rather amazing, and I don't think opposing one is enough to warrant opposition to the plan on whole given the obvious good that comes from the other. Hunter says his opposition stems from the concern that employers of reservists would drop them from their employer-paid healthcare systems in order to shift the burden to the government. If that was Hunter's true concern, one would think that he'd see little opposition if he was to add a provision that prohibited employers from doing just that.
So why doesn't he? Heartless ideological hubris!
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2 comments:
dont you just love these gueys. wave the flag and take away the benis. the repug kooks running the congtress must hardly be able to hold their contempt as they dismantl the fed govt!
As a veteran I am DISGUSTED with the way the Bush administration has been treating their veterans... cutting pay, cutting programs... cutting... cutting... cutting...cutting...cutting... and they wonder WHY they are having recruiting problems.
Well, Bush learned it on his Mommy's lap: "But why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Oh, I mean, it's, not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" -- Barbara Bush
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