Asymmetric Military

This is a fairly important issue for the Obama Administration. They need to be able to show how efficient government run healthcare is. By showing how little it costs to run Medicare, and the VA system, they hope to convince Americans that government can do healthcare better and for less money than the private sector.
Medicare looks good on paper because many of the real costs are pushed over to the private side. VA care can be shown to be better than it is by sending significant costs back to the private side as well.
Beware when all the propaganda starts to come out showing how efficient the government is at running healthcare. Nothing you will read will acknowledge that we currently have a universal healthcare plan and that it is payed for by all of us who pay for private care. It is called "Emergency Room Service." It is where most uninsured people get their care and you are now paying for it if you have private health insurance. Within the next two weeks, I will have a post on this subject at my blog.

I voted for President Obama and I support him still but not on this issue of sending the medical bills for service connected injuries to the veterans private insurance. I know President Obama has never joined the military and I can understand and forgive him for this mistake because he has never had to put this country's uniform on. If he had he would understand how what he is proposing is wrong on so many levels.
The United States has an obligation to take care of all veterans who have been injured in anyway and that includes taking care of the costs not handing the bill over to someone else.
We Veterans have paid the price and carry the scars and pain our bodies and mind still endure. MR. President you need to have a long talk with the military members under your command and try to understand what your doing is wrong.
I say this not as a threat but as a warning from a citizen and a veteran of this Great Nation that if you go on with this proposal than you will leave me no choice but to take my vote and my voice to the next election and do all I can along with all my Veteran buddies and try our best to make sure you don't get re-elected. I hope you make the right choice because I voted for you but had Id known you had little regard for our injured vets I would have never voted for you.
Please do the right thing I still believe in you and I know your a smart man I just hope your ears are not closed on this issue. THINK ABOUT IT...Thank You!

When I supported the "candidate of change", this sure wasn't what I was voting for! Every 'legal' employee in the country gets workmen's compensation, yet our new president wants to deny "workmens comp" to the federal employees that do the most, with the most risk?!?!?! Where is the humanity in that? And what will that do to the premiums for the rest of us? As the earlier poster said - we NEED universal health care! We are already paying for it, without the benefits, in higher insurance fees. It would be nice if our "president of change" would get HR 676 passed!

I support Obama as well. But, I do not agree with him on this issue either. I am not a supporter of the insurance industry in its current genesis nor am i a supporter of the medical industry. But, you can't just push your responsibility off to someone else. The military and the VA are responsible for the care of soldiers injured in service to the country not private insurance companies. This plan makes no sense to me...financially or politically.

Because Obama is not a stupid man, and because he is attempting to try new approaches to governance including universal health care, could this be a shift in the service provider, and the payment processor rather than the scream of the wounded have to pay of their own medical care.

I don’t know that much about the inner workings here, but I can see that if private service providers take over some of het role now held by the VA, more dollars would flow into the private sector, and less into the public sector.

I have no idea what the military would provide as insurance, but I cannot imagine the cutting off of services for war related injuries.

I do know that co-pays reduce abuses of the system where some folks go to the doctor as an avenue for social contact. Others want treatment for daily hangovers.

For some reason, I don’t think the real story is on the table yet.