Showing posts with label highviz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label highviz. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

WAPO: Veterans Groups Denounce Private Insurance Proposal

("Shame on you, Mr. President.") About our Vets and their Benefits

Veterans Groups Denounce Private Insurance Proposal


Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 18, 2009; Page A04

An Obama administration proposal to bill veterans' private insurance companies for treatment of combat-related injuries has prompted veterans groups to condemn the idea as unethical and powerful lawmakers on Capitol Hill to promise their opposition.

Nevertheless, the White House confirmed yesterday that the idea remains under consideration, and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and leaders of veterans groups are scheduled to meet tomorrow to discuss it further.

The proposal -- intended to save the Department of Veterans Affairs $530 million a year -- would authorize VA to bill private insurance companies for the treatment of injuries and medical conditions related to military service, such as amputations, post-traumatic stress disorder and other battle wounds. VA already pursues such third-party billing for conditions that are not service-related.

Veterans groups said the change would be an abrogation of the government's responsibility to care for the war wounded. And they expressed concern that the new policy would make employers less willing to hire veterans, for fear of the cost of insuring them, and that insurance benefits for veterans' families would be jeopardized.

Lawmakers explicitly ruled out the proposal yesterday in budget recommendations from the Senate and House veterans' affairs committees.

The chairman of the Senate panel,  Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), said a majority of the committee members say the plan is fundamentally unfair.

"America's veterans and their families pay the true cost of war everyday, and we must pay for the care and benefits they have earned. I look forward to working with my colleagues and the Administration to pass a budget worthy of their service," Akaka said in a statement.

 Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a senior member of the Veterans' Affairs and Budget committees, warned VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki last week that the idea would be "dead on arrival," and she vowed yesterday that any budget containing the provision "is not going to pass."

"The VA has an obligation to pay for service-related care, and they should not be nickel-and-diming vets in the process," she said in an interview. "This proposal means that family members will be hurt because, if a vet meets the maximum [benefit amount] for their insurance, their wife and kids would not be able to get insurance [benefits] anymore. . . . God forbid a wounded vet from Iraq has a wife who gets breast cancer."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday that the Obama administration has not made "the final . . . decision on third-party billing as it relates to service-related injuries."

At the same time, Gibbs noted that the administration is seeking an 11 percent increase in discretionary spending in the VA budget, a decision lawmakers and veterans groups have praised. "This president takes very seriously the needs of our wounded warriors that have given so much to protect our freedom on battlefields throughout the world," Gibbs said at a White House news conference.

VA and the Office of Management and Budget did not respond to requests for more details on the proposal.

Veterans groups said the plan was a puzzling political misstep by the new administration in its relations with the 25 million Americans who have served in the military. Obama heard firsthand about such objections Monday when he met with leaders of the groups at the White House.

"To ask veterans to save $500 million in a [VA] budget of over $100 billion is not only bad policy, it is bad politics," said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, who attended the meeting.

"It could be a rookie mistake," he said. "Ultimately, it's only going to hurt the president."

Another problem, critics said, is that the proposal could hurt wounded veterans' employment opportunities, particularly with small businesses.

"A small company is not going to want to take on the burden of increased premiums" by hiring a wounded veteran, said Craig Roberts, media relations manager for the American Legion. He added that the proposal could make buying private health insurance prohibitively expensive for these veterans.

Details of the proposal remained unclear yesterday, and a spokesman for the health insurance industry said its potential impact is difficult to assess. "We are going to carefully evaluate any proposal that is made," said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for the trade association America's Health Insurance Plans.

Lawmakers and veterans advocates said VA could save $500 million by simply collecting from private insurers all that it is authorized to bill for non-service injuries each year.

More broadly, the issue underscores a significant challenge confronting the administration: ballooning health-care costs for veterans and active military members taking up an ever-larger share of VA and Pentagon budgets.

It is uncertain how many veterans would be affected by the proposed change, which would concern only those with private health insurance. As many as 7 million veterans are enrolled in the VA health-care program, and about 5 million use VA facilities each year.

Some veterans groups voiced concern that the administration's plan could represent a move toward privatizing VA benefits.

Other experts said it reflects the broader dilemma of how to increase cost-sharing for medical care in comprehensive programs such as the VA one. "There has been no change in cost-sharing features for 10 or 12 or more years," said William Winkenwerder Jr., the Pentagon's former top health official, who runs a private health strategy and consulting firm in the Washington area. "That is what is most responsible for driving up the cost of those programs to the government," he said.

Still, any proposals to increase cost-sharing "tend not to be very popular politically, especially at this time," Winkenwerder said.


Saturday, August 30, 2008

In Summary: The Best Speech at the Democratic National Convetion was made by....John Kerry! (D-MA)!

(((ABSOLUTELY.)))

But like "jude the Obscure" let's just change his name to John, and the sex to politics; Kerry, who just won his 6th term, is very much in the Senate. But man, oh man, he was more powerful than any campaigning done in 2004. It proves that any swift-boating tactics could not shut this man DOWN.

the new republic's sister blog, national post, said:

The speech you should have watched: John Kerry's blistering assault on McCain
Posted: August 28, 2008, 3:02 PM by Shane Dingman


((( WATCH IT NOW! )))

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2008/08/28/the-speech-you-should-have-watched-john-kerry-s-blistering-assault-on-mccain.aspx


Our sister-publication The New Republic and its staff are blanketing the Democratic convention, and from their coverage we wanted to return to an underappreciated star of the convention. It was, no kidding, 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry.

Here's TNR's Chris Orr on one speech you may not have watched:

"Like most, if I'd been told yesterday that John Kerry would give a sharper speech than Bill Clinton, I would have assumed it was because Clinton tanked. The latter didn't (remotely) happen, but the former did, with Kerry giving by far the best speech I've ever seen from him.

"He spoke for just under 14 minutes, but in his limited time Kerry hammered the crap out of McCain for most of his speech, and did so in a way that highlighted how wrong Kerry thinks the Bush/McCain axis has been and how right candidate Obama is."

----Abbe Buck, PR, HighViz PR

# # #

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Ann Coulter will campaign for Hillary Clinton - and I will EAT my desktop!

WHY do they ("the media") allow this shrike on national cable television? WHY WHY WHY????? She writes this book, plugs it shamelessly (nice dress, etc., ad nauseum), but jumps on the BASH McCain Bandwagon with Mark Levin, El Rush-BLOW, and the merry GOP henchman and voila! -- I [heart] Hillary, "I'm a Hillary girl now!"- Either this is a BAD Publicity stunt, and/or it further propels evil john mccain into the Oval Office - whooosh! He's got the Nom! Get over it!

And trust me, at one time I truly, deeply admired her, for her balls to the walls, f___ you mentality. It made her famous!

http://highvizpr.blogspot.com/2005/04/ann-coulter-on-cover-of-time-ultimate.html
and the Columba Journalism Review made sure that they let me know about it!

Come to think of it, the shrike is alright! There may be that method to her spinning madness....



Ann Coulter on McCain and Conservatives
Friday, February 01, 2008
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity & Colmes," January 31, 2008. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: And Senator John McCain is gaining momentum, but not all conservatives are jumping for joy. Senator McCain is a polarizing candidate for many. And critics point to his stance on immigration, his work with Russ Feingold. But with a potential Hillary Clinton candidacy on the Democratic side of the aisle, will true conservatives eventually fall in line and support the Arizona senator?

Joining us now, author of the "New York Times" best seller, "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd be Republicans," our friend Ann Coulter. How are you?
ANN COULTER, AUTHOR, "IF DEMOCRATS HAD ANY BRAINS": Fine, thank you.
HANNITY: I'm standing on substance here.
COULTER: Yes.
HANNITY: It's immigration. It's limits on free speech. It's not supporting tax cuts.
COULTER: It's Anwar. It's torture at Guantanamo.
HANNITY: Class warfare rhetoric. It's interrogations. It's Guantanamo. It's Anwar. These are not small issues to conservatives.
COULTER: No, and if you're looking at substance rather than whether it's an R or D after his name, manifestly, if our's candidate than Hillary's going to be our girl, Sean, because she's more conservative than he is. I think she would be stronger on the war on terrorism. I absolutely believe that.
HANNITY: That's the one area I disagree with you.
COULTER: No, yes, we're going to sign up together. Let me explain that point on terrorism.
HANNITY: You'd vote for Hillary —
COULTER: I will campaign for her if it's McCain.
HANNITY: If Hillary is watching tonight, you just got an endorsement —
COLMES: I just heard the word no.
COULTER: I was touched when she cried. That part isn't true. But the rest of it is true. He has led the fight against — well, as you say, interrogations. I say torture at Guantanamo. She hasn't done that. She hasn't taken a position in front.
HANNITY: Without interrupting you, let me give you one distinction — that's what liberals do to you. Let me give you one distinction, he did support the war —
COULTER: So did Hillary.
HANNITY: But he stayed with it. He supported the surge. I didn't like his criticisms of Rumsfeld, but he was right —
COULTER: OK, let's get to him supporting the surge. He keeps going on and on about how he was the only Republican who supported the surge and other Republicans attacked him. It was so awful how he was attacked. It was worse than being held in a tiger cage.
I looked up the record. Republicans all supported the surge. He's not only not the only one who supported the surge, I promise you no Republican attacked him for this. And you know why he's saying that, Sean, because he keeps saying it at every debate, I'm the only one. I was attacked by Republicans. He's confusing Republicans with his liberal friends. They're the ones who attacked him for it, his real friends.
HANNITY: Hillary Clinton, if she gets her way, will nationalize health care. She's going to pull the troops out of Iraq.
COULTER: I don't think she will.
HANNITY: That's what she's saying she's going to do. She says in a hundred days she's immediately going to begin to pull out.
(CROSS TALK)
COULTER: She's running in a Democratic primary. He's running in the Republican primary, and their positions are about that far apart. When George Bush said at the State of the Union Address that the surge is working in Iraq, Obama sat on his hands, Kennedy sat on his hands, Hillary leapt up and applauded that we are winning in the surge and that the surge is working in Iraq.
She gave much better answers in those debates when Democrats like Obama and Biden were saying what do we do? What do we do if three cities are attacked. She said, I will find who did it and I will go after them.
HANNITY: You want to sit back.
(CROSS TALK)
ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: Can I just say something — Ann -
(CROSS TALK)
COULTER: Hillary is absolutely more conservative.
COLMES: My work is done. My work is done.
COULTER: Moreover, she lies less than John McCain. I'm a Hillary girl now. She lies less than John McCain. She's smarter than John McCain, so that when she's caught shamelessly lying, at least the Clintons know they've been caught lying. McCain is so stupid, he doesn't even know he's been caught.
COLMES: Go. In fact, could you fill in for me next week? Let me get this straight, would you vote for Hillary Clinton?
COULTER: Yes.
COLMES: You would actually go in a voting booth —
COULTER: If it's close and the candidate is John McCain, because John McCain is not only bad for Republicanism, which he definitely is. He is bad for —
(CROSS TALK)
COLMES: Can I tell you the last thing that Hillary Clinton wants? Ann Coulter's endorsement.
COULTER: Even now he's running as a Republican, he won't give up on amnesty. At that debate the other not —
(CROSS TALK)
COULTER: I'm serious.
COLMES: I know, but let me get serious for a second, because so far I haven't. Look, are you telling me — look at all the people endorsing McCain. I'm not talking about Johnny come lately Republicans. Nancy Reagan is wrong? Rick Perry is wrong? Arnold is wrong? Charlie Crist is wrong?
COULTER: Other than Nancy Reagan —
(CROSS TALK)
COULTER: I will explain. It's not that they're wrong. Other than Nancy Reagan, and by the way we loved Nancy Reagan for loving Ron Reagan. We didn't love her for her political persuasion.
(CROSS TALK)
COLMES: All of these people are off the beat.
COULTER: I'm trying to answer the question. Stop talking. I'm moving Nancy Reagan to the side, and I'm saying all the rest of these political endorsements mean one thing; they think he's the front runner. They want a job in his administration. Nothing means less than an endorsement from someone who wants a position.
COLMES: They're all hoes just looking for a job?
COULTER: No, but they all do want jobs.
COLMES: I'm giving her the opportunity —
COULTER: They do all want jobs. It's good to be friends with the king. Some people —
HANNITY: Will you be careful.
COULTER: Some people don't care about being the king.

Copy: Content and Programming Copyright 2008 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

AND
from Coulter's website:
QUOTATIONS FROM CHAIRMAN ((( Charwoman Mao )))ANN

February 1, 2008, 5:22 AM
Would that he would do it officially . . . - Democrats say McCain nearly abandoned GOP
February 1, 2008, 4:49 AM

January 31, 2008, 3:34 PM
John Edwards Drops Out, Endorses McCain - Scrappleface

GOP TO EDWARDS: HOW MUCH FOR THAT CONCESSION SPEECH? January 30, 2008 - The Democrats are trying to give away an election they should win in a walk by nominating someone with real problems -- like, for example, a first-term senator with a 100 percent rating from Americans for Democratic Action and whose middle name is "Hussein." But we won't let them. The bright side of the Florida debacle is that I no longer fear Hillary Clinton. (I mean in terms of her becoming president -- on a personal level, she's still a little creepy.) I'd rather deal with President Hillary than with President McCain. With Hillary, we'll get the same ruinous liberal policies with none of the responsibility. Also, McCain lies a lot, which is really more a specialty of the Democrats. Recently, McCain responded to Mitt Romney's statement that he understood the economy based on his many years in the private sector by claiming Romney had said a military career is not a "real job." McCain's neurotic boast that he is the only Republican who supported the surge is beginning to sound as insane as Bill Clinton's claim to being the "first black president" -- although less insulting to blacks. As with the Clintons, you find yourself looking up such tedious facts as this, which ran a week after Bush announced the surge: "On the morning of Bush's address, Romney endorsed a troop surge." -- The National Journal, Jan. 13, 2007 And yet for the 4 billionth time, at the Jan. 5, 2008, Republican debate, McCain bragged about his own raw courage in supporting the surge despite (apocryphal) Republican attacks, saying: "I said at the time that Gen. Petraeus and his strategy must be employed, and I was criticized by Republicans at that time. And that was a low point, but I stuck to it. I didn't change." A review of contemporaneous news stories about the surge clearly demonstrates that the only Republicans who were so much as "skeptical" of the surge consisted of a few oddball liberal Republicans such as Sens. Gordon Smith, Norm Coleman and Olympia Snowe. They certainly weren't attacking McCain, their standard-bearer in liberal Republicanism. But even if they were, it was a "low point" for McCain being "criticized" by the likes of Olympia Snowe? In point of fact, McCain didn't even stand up to the milquetoasts. In April 2007, when Democrats in the Senate passed a bill funding the troops but also requiring a rapid withdrawal, "moderate" Republicans Smith and Chuck Hagel voted with the Democrats. McCain and Lindsey Graham skipped the vote. But like the Democrats, McCain thinks if he simply says something over and over again, he can make people believe it's true. Thus again at the South Carolina debate on Jan. 10, McCain was proclaiming that he was "the only one on this stage" who supported the surge. Since he would deny it about two minutes later, here is exactly what Mr. Straight Talk said about the surge: "I supported that; I argued for it. I'm the only one on this stage that did. And I condemn the Rumsfeld strategy before that." The next question went to Giuliani and -- amid great flattery -- Giuliani noted that he also supported Bush's surge "the night of the president's speech." Mr. Straight Talk contradicted Giuliani, saying: "Not at the time." Again, Giuliani said: "The night of the president's speech, I was on television. I supported the surge. I've supported it throughout." To which McCain finally said he didn't mean that he was "the only one on this stage" who supported the surge. So by "the only one on this stage," McCain really meant, "one of several people on this stage." OK, great. Now tell us your definition of the word "is," Senator. I know Republicans have been trained not to go prostrate at Ivy League degrees, but do we have to admire stupidity? Mr. Straight Talk also announced at that same debate: "One of the reasons why I won in New Hampshire is because I went there and told them the truth." That and the fact that Democrats were allowed to vote in the Republican primary. Even in the Florida primary, allegedly limited to Republicans, McCain lost among Republicans. (Seventeen percent of the Republican primary voters in Florida called themselves "Independents.") That helps, but why would any Republican vote for McCain? At least under President Hillary, Republicans in Congress would know that they're supposed to fight back. When President McCain proposes the same ideas -- tax hikes, liberal judges and Social Security for illegals -- Republicans in Congress will support "our" president -- just as they supported, if only briefly, Bush's great ideas on amnesty and Harriet Miers. You need little flags like that for Republicans since, as we know from the recent unpleasantness in Florida, Republicans are unalterably stupid. Republicans who vote for McCain are trying to be cute, like the Democrats were four years ago by voting for the "pragmatic" candidate, Vietnam vet John Kerry. This will turn out to be precisely as clever a gambit as nominating Kerry was, the brilliance of which was revealed on Election Day 2004.
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