Things that are more important to democrats than the health care of veterans
By: DrJohn
VA-Scandal
US veterans are dying at the hands of left wing bureaucrats and democrats have made clear they do not regard the issue as serious. There are many things that are more important than the health of veterans. Among them:
- Health care of Gitmo terrorists
Here’s another secret the White House doesn’t want you to know about the VA. Al Qaeda detainees get better medical treatment than our veterans.
Say what?
Yes, it’s true. I know because I served as a Pentagon spokesman from 2005-2009 and visited Guantanamo Bay Naval Base over 30 times during those years.
Despite the fact that Al Qaeda terrorists carried out the Sept. 11 terror attacks, killing 3,000 people in America, the admitted co-conspirators and their roughly 150 fellow jihadists at Gitmo have approximately 100 doctors, nurses and health care personnel assigned to them.
Doctors and medical personnel are at their beck and call. Got a cold, a fever, a toothache, a tumor, chest or back pain, mental health issues, PTSD? No problem, come right on in. Military doctors are waiting to see you.
The VA and Gitmo eligible patient-to-health care provider ratios speak volumes.
While the Gitmo ratio is 1.5 to 1, for America’s 9 million veterans receiving VA health care and 267,930 VA employees, the ratio is 35 to 1.
- Bonuses for administrative officials who let vets die on waiting lists:
$8.8 million in all.
Sharon Helman, the director of the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care System, “got an $8,500 bonus last month while there was an open [inspector general] investigation into Phoenix,” Chairman Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview Wednesday.
It had been previously reported that Helman received more than $9,000 in bonus pay in 2013 on top of her annual salary of $169,900. The VA office of inspector general began investigating the Phoenix VA for wrongdoing in December 2013, months before Helman received the additional $8,500 bonus.
- Bradley Manning’s sex change operation
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has formally approved the request of Pvt. Bradley Manning, convicted for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks, to be temporarily transferred out of military custody in order to undergo expensive hormone therapy and surgery to become a woman.
Manning, whose taxpayer-funded request to change his name from Bradley to Chelsea was approved last month by a Kansas court, has been able to obtain repeated diagnoses from military doctors that he suffers from “gender dysphobia”; a condition of someone ‘discontented’ with the sex they were ‘assigned with’ at birth. It was first listed as a medical condition in 2007 by the authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Two Pentagon officials quoted by WUSA-TV, the CBS News affiliate in Washington, D.C., claim the transfer orders were submitted because neither the Defense nor Veterans Department authorize such medical services, while the US Bureau of Prisons does. Pentagon Spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby denies the claim, saying no decision has been made to transfer Manning to a civilian facility.
As the medical needs of Manning, convicted in 2013 and sentenced to 35 years in prison for stealing 750,000 classified defense department documents in order to disseminate them to Wikileaks, were being assiduously attended to by America’s defense establishment, untold hundreds of American servicemen and women suffering from genuine life-threatening and acute medical conditions have allegedly been left to die on at least seven waiting lists managed by the US Veterans Administration.
At least 19 veterans “served” by VA facilities in South Carolina and Georgia died apparently avoidable deaths from colon and bowel cancers after they were put on phony waiting lists designed to prevent from obtaining the necessary diagnostic tests.
Phoenix VA doctor Dr. Sam Foote was the first to publicly expose the scandal when he claimed that up to 40 people in his jurisdiction alone had died preventable deaths while on VA waiting lists.
Sex change treatments can last several years and, in Manning’s case, will cost taxpayers up to $40,000. The 2014 published Medicaid reimbursement for a colonoscopy is $479.39.
- Changing the Redskins’ name
In a letter Thursday, 49 senators mentioned the NBA’s quick action recently to ban Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life after he was heard on an audio recording making offensive comments about blacks. They said Goodell should formally push to rename the Redskins.
“We urge you and the National Football League to send the same clear message as the NBA did: that racism and bigotry have no place in professional sports,” read the letter, which did not use the word “Redskins.”
Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida wrote his own letter saying he doesn’t believe that retaining the Redskin name “is appropriate in this day and age.”
- Protecting unions:
On Wednesday, the House of Representative overwhelming approved the Department of Veterans Affairs Management Accountability Act, a bill that would relax the standard bureaucratic red tape that makes it exceedingly difficult to fire government employees, even those implicated in an embarrassing scandal.
The vote was not unanimous, however, as 33 Democrats for some reason voted against the legislation. The opposition was comprised of union-backed liberals, as well as lawmakers such as Jim Moran (Va.), Steny Hoyer (Md.), and Chris Van Hollen (Md.), who represent the D.C. suburbs where many senior VA employees reside.
About the deaths of vets waiting for treatment, Bernie Sanders had this touching thought:
“People die every day.”
- Welfare for illegal aliens
“Nonetheless, as it now stands,” said the IG, “the payment of federal funds through this tax benefit appears to provide an additional incentive for aliens to enter, reside and work in the U.S. without authorization, which contradicts federal law and policy to remove such incentives.”
In 2011, the IG released another report on IRS ACTC payments to illegal aliens.
In 2008, this report revealed, the IRS paid $2.14 billion in ACTC money to 1.53 million illegal aliens; in 2009, it paid $2.86 billion to 1.85 million illegal aliens; and in 2010, it paid $4 billion to 2.18 million illegal aliens.
Over all nine years the IG audited, the IRS paid $14.228 billion in ACTC money to illegal aliens.
- Golf
It’s not the money
But Jacobs was not finished crushing the dreams of his hosts. Less than an hour later, in an interview with MSNBC host Joy Reid, the retired Army colonel delivered a near fatal blow to the central liberal conceit.
When asked by Reid if Veterans Affairs Sec. Eric Shinseki might receive the benefit of the doubt from veterans who received poor or no care because he was a “good guy” who had opposed the Iraq War, Jacobs did not let her down gently when he answered no.
The retired colonel went on to again insist that money is not the VA’s problem. In fact, you could confiscate ever dollar of the incalculable wealth of both the Koch brothers have hoarded and invested it into the Department of Veterans Affairs, and it would not resolve the chronic mismanagement issues plaguing that government-run enterprise.
“It doesn’t matter how much money you give them,” Jacobs said, observing that the VA was among the few departments to receive more funding following forced sequestration cuts in 2013. “The structure of the organization is incapable of delivering what we really want and really need, and that is timely, first-class medical care for all our veterans.”
No, money is not the issue
The VA’s budget has been exploding, even as the number of veterans steadily declines. From 2000 to 2013, outlays nearly tripled, while the population of veterans declined by 4.3 million.
Medical care spending — which consumes about 40% of the VA’s budget — has climbed 193% over those years, while the number of patients served by the VA each year went up just 68%, according to data from the VA.
From 2008 to 2012 alone, per-patient spending at the VA climbed 27%. To put that in perspective, per capita health spending nationwide rose just 13% during those years.
And per-enrollee spending for Medicare went up only 10%, government data show.
Some will argue that the increase in health spending was the direct result of all those wounded warriors coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan.
But these vets aren’t driving VA costs higher.
A Congressional Budget Office report found that they cost $4,800, on average, in 2010 compared with $8,800 for other veterans who used the system.
Obama is doing with Shinseki what he does with incompetent heads of departments- keeping him.
Obama asserts that caring for veterans is a “sacred obligation.” We all know about Obama’s phony promises to help vets back on 2007. How many remember one of the first things Obama actually did when he became President?
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Veterans groups are angry after President Obama told them Monday that he is still considering a proposal to have treatment for service-connected injuries charged to veterans’ private insurance plans.
Leaders of the country’s most prominent veterans groups met Monday at the White House with Obama, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Steven Kosiak, the director in charge of defense spending for the Office of Management and Budget.
Some of the veterans groups were caught off guard when the president said the administration is still thinking about the idea as a way of generating $540 million for the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2010. The groups and some members of Congress have been very vocal in opposing the idea.
The message, according to some of the people in the room, was that if the groups do not like this idea, they need to come back with another way of saving or raising revenue for the VA.
Making hollow promises is nothing new for Barack Obama. He is full of sh*t.
democrats care so much for vets that they labelled them “terrorist threats.” Predictably, Pelosi blamed Bush.
They’re full of sh*t too.
UPDATE
Almost forgot another way Obama showed vets how much he cares for them:
Obama Cuts Military Pensions, Exempts ObamaCare Subsidies
The administration plans to cut the military pensions of those who served their country while giving public employees a break by exempting their ObamaCare subsidies from sequestration.
On the heels of announcing that Army troop levels will be cut below pre-World War II levels, the Military Times has reported that the Obama administration is planning to reduce military pension costs by 10% by converting part of their retirement to 401(k)-like defined-contribution plans from defined-benefit plans.
What makes this interesting is that it affects military retirees and members of the military who are non-union and therefore can’t strike or engage in collective bargaining. Public-sector union employees will retain their defined-benefit plans.
So, those who defend this country will be cut while those who feed at the public trough and whose union dues provide a ready supply of campaign cash will not.
To cut the retirement benefits of the military after these genuine heroes have fought with honor and distinction for 13 years in Iraq and Afghanistan is unconscionable. It’s particularly despicable to treat American military retirees worse than other public employees.
http://floppingaces.net/2014/05/24/things-that-are-more-important-to-democrats-than-the-health-care-of-veterans/
