{"id":4404,"date":"2009-03-17T06:49:21","date_gmt":"2009-03-17T11:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4404"},"modified":"2009-03-17T06:49:21","modified_gmt":"2009-03-17T11:49:21","slug":"coordination-of-idiocy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4404","title":{"rendered":"Coordination Of Idiocy"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have health insurance, you know about Coordination of Benefits; if you have a family and have a spouse or partner who might have health insurance, your <\/em>plan wants to get their <\/em>plan to chip in for part of the costs.\u00a0 It’s understandable…<\/p>\n

…when treating run of the mill illnesses.<\/p>\n

The Administration wants to extend this idea to veterans; he wants the Veterans Administration to coordinate benefits with veterans’ civilian healthcare providers to help pay for care of vets’ service-related <\/em>conditions.<\/p>\n

The commander of the American Legion is not amused:<\/a><\/p>\n

It became apparent during our discussion today that the President intends to move forward with this unreasonable plan,” said Commander David K. Rehbein of The American Legion. “He says he is looking to generate $540-million by this method, but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by it.”The Commander, clearly angered as he emerged from the session said, “This reimbursement plan would be inconsistent with the mandate ‘ to care for him who shall have borne the battle’ given that the United States government sent members of the armed forces into harm’s way, and not private insurance companies. I say again that The American Legion does not and will not support any plan that seeks to bill a veteran for treatment of a service connected disability at the very agency that was created to treat the unique need of America’s veterans!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m a tax hawk, who is all about finding ways to cut government spending and privatize government functions.<\/p>\n

I also believe in restricting government to the places and functions that it’s supposed to be dealing with.<\/p>\n

One of those – one of the few, really – is defense.<\/p>\n

And so while I’ve mercilessly mocked those stupid “happy to pay for a better Minnesota” signs, and am very penurious about taxes as matter of principle<\/em>, taxes related to defense, and to taking care of those who volunteer to defend this country (especially their service-related injuries) are among the very <\/em>few I’ll pay without a whole lot of pushback.<\/p>\n

It’s a stupid plan.<\/p>\n

And I’m trying to picture what would have happened if a Republican administration would have suggested it.\u00a0 Thousands of addlepated leftybloggers would launch “Why Does The President Hate Veterans” posts; Jon Stewart would snark and smirk; Anderson Cooper would furrow his brow and scowl.<\/p>\n

But now that it’s The One?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you have health insurance, you know about Coordination of Benefits; if you have a family and have a spouse or partner who might have health insurance, your plan wants to get their plan to chip in for part of the costs.\u00a0 It’s understandable… …when treating run of the mill illnesses. The Administration wants to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,35,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats","category-money","category-president-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}