Facts, Lies and No Videotape, Part I

President Obama and his administration recently proposed an ill advised plan to charge service related treatments to military veterans with private health insurance. Although the proposal was intended to raise more than $500 million in revenue, the plan was simply a bad idea. Currently veterans only pay for the treatment of injuries and ailments unrelated to their military service, thereby exposing wounded soldiers to co-pays and deductibles for the care of their war wounds. Thankfully President Obama had decided against pursuing this plan.

With that being said, the conservatives who are criticizing the plan above have seemed to miraculously forgotten the steps that President Obama has already taken to repair the damage Mr. Bush left at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Under the Bush administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs suffered through massive budget shortfalls ($1 billion in 2005 alone) due to the fact that Mr. Bush’s cronies downplayed the agency’s financial needs. Previous reports from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirmed that officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs used controversial accounting practices during the height of the Iraq War to justify cuts to veteran’s health care enacted by the Bush administration. In January, the GAO released a report which stated that those same agency officials continued to minimize their budget estimates to Congress in the last days of the Bush administration in order decrease spending.

In the 2010 budget he unveiled in February, President Obama increased the budget of the Department of Veterans Affairs by 15.5%. That increase will help fund an overhaul of the agency's technological infrastructure and, in turn, eliminate the need for veterans to wait an average of six months for disability claims to be processed. President Obama's budget will also subsidize a program to provide health care to non-disabled veterans earning more than $30,000 a year. (During Mr. Bush's presidency, those veterans did not qualify for health care administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs.) Through a pilot project with non-profit organizations, President Obama’s budget will aim to provide housing and job training to homeless veterans and veterans at risk of becoming homeless. Veterans who are medically retired from active duty will be allowed to keep their full disability compensation and retired pay. Last but not least, President Obama's budget will expand mental health screening and treatment with a focus on reaching veterans in rural areas through mobile health clinics and "vet centers".