{"id":3066,"date":"2009-11-13T15:49:45","date_gmt":"2009-11-13T22:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=3066"},"modified":"2009-11-13T22:13:36","modified_gmt":"2009-11-14T05:13:36","slug":"no-rational-discourse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=3066","title":{"rendered":"No Rational Discourse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night a neighbor came over with some work shirts he wanted Donna to embroider.\u00a0 We asked him how things were going with his heating & air conditioning business.\u00a0 He told us business was great.\u00a0 With all the new green energy tax credits available to consumers, he’d been selling a lot of solar-powered water heaters.<\/p>\n

But he talked about those tax credits as if they were a gift from heaven, not part of the Obama administration’s stimulus package, so I mentioned it to him.\u00a0 This set off a tirade about how Obama is killing business.\u00a0 It was such a disconnect I could only marvel.<\/p>\n

But I kept trying.\u00a0 Since we’re both vets I mentioned that Obama had increased funding for VA health care.\u00a0 This prompted an even crazier assertion, one I’d not heard before: that Obama had proposed cutting off medical care to the nation’s military veterans, and thank God vets had stood up and forced him to back down.<\/p>\n

I decided then and there that we had left rational discourse behind and went into mumble-polite-banalities mode.\u00a0 He left a bit later.\u00a0 At least he didn’t take his shirts with him, so Donna still stands to make a few bucks.<\/p>\n

So.\u00a0 Did Obama propose cutting off medical care to the nation’s veterans?\u00a0 Er, not exactly<\/a> . . . back in March, members of his staff proposed that the VA, which provides medical care to many veterans, try to recoup costs by billing veterans’ private insurers.\u00a0 Some vets have private supplemental medical insurance; most don’t, so the proposal would have applied only to some vets, not all.\u00a0 And it wouldn’t have affected a single vets’ medical care.<\/p>\n

But whenever anyone tries to discuss changes, no matter how minor, to an established entitlement like government provided health care for veterans (which has been around since the end of the Civil War), the banshees begin to shriek.\u00a0 Veterans’ groups protested loudly and the Obama administration backed down.<\/p>\n

In fact, the military has always (well, at least since I’ve been in the service) had a policy of trying to recover expenses from members’ private insurance plans.<\/p>\n