Trump's Abject Failure Towards Veterans

Republicans always talk about "supporting the troops" and "honoring veterans" with talk being the operative word.  Republican talk and actions never coincide with the objective reality experienced by veterans and under the Trump/Pence regime the situation has grown far worse.  Many veterans find themselves waiting on benefits payments and facing eviction for non-payment of rent.  And then there is the issue of waiting to receive medical benefits - something my son-in-law can cite chapter and verse on.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the growing scandal surrounding the VA and the plight of veterans.  When Trump says he honors and supports veterans, like so much that comes out of his mouth, it's a lie.  Here are article highlights:

Donald Trump did not go to Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day. He was “extremely busy,” he told reporters in a press call on Friday. But his conscience does not appear to trouble him. During a recent visit to the Marine barracks in Washington, he even congratulated himself for his commitment to veterans. “The fact is I’ve done a lot,“ he said. But as is often the case, reality does not exactly comport with Trump’s version of events. [Trump] The president hasn’t accomplished much for veterans, as a burgeoning scandal within the Department of Veterans Affairs demonstrates.

The VA owes GI bill payments to thousands of veterans, NBC News reported on Thursday. Some have waited months for their benefits, which cover living expenses in addition to tuition bills, and the VA has admitted that it has received several complaints from veterans who now face eviction because they haven’t been able to pay rent. VA officials have blamed the backlog on the department’s IT system. Though NBC has reported delays in payments since August, a Thursday hearing conducted by the U.S. House Committee on Veteran Affairs underscored the new extent of the crisis.

[V]eterans continue to struggle. “I can’t afford rent. I can’t afford groceries. It’s a lot of emotional strain and aggravation,” Daniel Gorman, an Iraq War veteran and Fordham University student, told the Washington Post on Thursday. “I’m supposed to graduate in May 2019, but I don’t know if that’s feasible if this persists.”

The flaws of the VA’s IT system predate the Trump administration. But as CNN reported on Thursday, the Forever GI bill Trump signed in 2017 may have exacerbated certain long-standing technology issues. “The legislation did not address the VA’s antiquated IT system used to account for those changes, and the department’s failure to implement changes to that system has resulted in a cascading series of errors affecting the distribution of housing allowances to veteran students,” CNN wrote. Congress provided $30 million for the VA to resolve its IT problems, but the Post reported that the department is six months late on a status update. Meanwhile, the department has over 45,000 unfilled job vacancies, no permanent information chief, and VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said in early November that he is planning unspecified budget cuts, at Trump’s request.

So though Trump doesn’t bear sole responsibility for the GI bill crisis, the issue illustrates the wide chasm between Trump’s professed affection for veterans, and the way veterans experience his preferred policies. Trump’s federal hiring freeze, which he temporarily instated not long after taking office, affected many veterans who relied on the federal government as a pathway to work. [Trump] The president has also repeatedly expressed interest in privatizing more of the VA’s functions, something most major veterans’ service organizations oppose.

Other Trumpian scandals threaten the department’s reputation, as well as its ability to fulfill its responsibilities to veterans. ProPublica reported in August that three Trump cronies — Palm Beach, Florida physician Bruce Moskowitz, Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter, and attorney Marc Sherman — wielded unprecedented influence over VA policy, though all three lack experience serving in either political office or in the U.S. military. The three are perceived by critics to favor the privatization of certain VA benefits, occasionally in ways that benefit their own business interests.

Public-private partnerships don’t always work out for veterans who are enrolled in the VA. Passed in 2014, the Veterans Choice Program, which allowed veterans burdened either by geographic distance from a VA facility, or by long waits for VA appointments, to seek alternative private care, should have reduced wait times. Efficiency was the program’s raison d’etre. But in June 2018, the Government Accountability Office concluded that the Choice program didn’t quite work as advertised. “The Choice program was aimed at reducing wait times through increased access to private health care, but the GAO’s performance audit conducted from April 2016 through May 2018 found that, in many cases, veterans would have been better off making appointments at VA facilities,” reported Military.com.

According to a November 13 story from Stars and Stripes, a separate GAO report found that private contractors hired to examine veterans who file disability claims often failed to meet basic standards for timeliness and accuracy. “Most contractors fell into the ‘unsatisfactory performance’ category, meaning 10 percent or more of their reports contained errors. The worst-performing contractor had errors in 38 percent of their exam reports,” Stars and Stripes reported.

As the GI bill crisis mushrooms and thousands of jobs go unfilled, the prospect of progress looks faint.

Upon first, superficial glance, Trump’s approach to the VA may look like hypocrisy. After all, he’s repeatedly claimed to love the troops. But hypocrisy is too simplistic a frame. Of course Trump says he loves the troops; try finding a politician in national office who’d say otherwise. And yes, [Trump] the president has failed to demonstrably improve conditions for veterans enrolled in the VA. But hypocrisy didn’t produce that outcome; instead, it was an inevitability, created by Trump’s commitment to small government.

Trump may not bear sole responsibility for the GI bill crisis, but his VA is in especially poor shape to remedy the problem. As a result, he’s inadvertently revealed the full consequences of a war on welfare. America may elevate veterans — may even bestow on them benefits she denies to civilians who have never taken up arms — but her benevolence is bounded by her more capitalist commitments. In the end, veterans are just citizens, subject to the same incompetencies and cruelties we all endure.

The Republican Plan to Kill Medicare

It was not only angry unemployed rural/under employed, low information whites who voted against their own economic interest when they cast their vote for Donald Trump and other Republicans. Many of the elderly did the same and will likely now face the consequences as Congressional Republicans now feel empowered to move forward on a long held dream: gutting Medicare and turning it into a limited voucher program.  The pipe dream of Republicans is that "increased competition will drive down premium costs" - something that has NOT happened in the regular heath insurance arena.  Faced with suddenly vastly increased medical care costs, many of the elderly will find their so-called golden years turning into nightmare years.  Indeed, Paul Ryan may get his wish at long last of forcing many seniors to live off inadequate resources once they must choose between eating, having heat in the winter or medical care. Meanwhile, Ryan will bloviate about his Catholic values even as he utter betrays the Church's social gospel message and cuts healthcare support in order to fund tax cuts for the very wealthy.  The man, as are his GOP allies, is evil.  As for those who voted Republican, they once again allowed Republican appeals to their racism, religious extremism and/or general bigotry to cut their own throats.  The New York Times looks at the coming GOP effort to end Medicare.  Here are excerpts:

[W]ith Election Day behind them, emboldened House Republicans say they will move forward on a years-old effort to shift Medicare away from its open-ended commitment to pay for medical services and toward a fixed government contribution for each beneficiary.

The idea rarely came up during Mr. Trump’s march toward the White House, but a battle over the future of Medicare could roil Washington during his first year in office, whether he wants it or not.

“Let me say unequivocally to you now: I have fought to protect Medicare for this generation and for future generations,” Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana, a Democrat running for re-election in 2018, said this week in a video message to constituents. “I have opposed efforts to privatize Medicare in the past, and I will oppose any effort to privatize Medicare or turn it into a voucher program in the future.”

For nearly six years, Speaker Paul D. Ryan has championed the new approach, denounced by Democrats as “voucherizing” Medicare. Representative Tom Price of Georgia, the House Budget Committee chairman and a leading candidate to be Mr. Trump’s secretary of health and human services, has also embraced the idea, known as premium support.

And Democrats are relishing the fight and preparing to defend the program, which was created in 1965 as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. They believe that if Mr. Trump chooses to do battle over Medicare, he would squander political capital, as President George W. Bush did with an effort to add private investment accounts to Social Security after his re-election in 2004.

Democrats will “stand firmly and unified” against Mr. Ryan if he tries to “shatter the sacred guarantee that has protected generations of seniors,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader.

Republicans have pressed for premium support since Mr. Ryan first included it in a budget blueprint in 2011. As he envisions it, Medicare beneficiaries would buy health insurance from one of a number of competing plans. The traditional fee-for-service Medicare program would compete directly with plans offered by private insurers like Humana, UnitedHealth Group and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Democrats say that premium support would privatize Medicare, replacing the current government guarantee with skimpy vouchers — “coupon care for seniors.” The fear is that the healthiest seniors would choose private insurance, lured by offers of free health club memberships and other wellness programs, leaving traditional Medicare with sicker, more expensive patients and higher premiums.

“Beneficiaries would have to pay much more to stay in traditional fee-for-service Medicare,” said John K. Gorman, a former Medicare official who is now a consultant to many insurers. “Regular Medicare would become the province of affluent beneficiaries who can buy their way out of” private plans.

“I am terrified of vouchers,” said Kim Ebb, 92, who lives in a retirement community in Bethesda, Md., and has diabetes, atrial fibrillation and irritable bowel syndrome. “You get a fixed amount of money to draw on for your expenses. Then you are on your own.”
Charles R. Drapeau, 64, of East Waterboro, Me., said he was rattled by the Republican plans.

“I’m scared to death,” said Mr. Drapeau, who has multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, and takes a drug that costs more than $10,000 a month. “We don’t know exactly how it will work, but just the fact that they are talking about messing with Medicare, it’s frightening to me.”

Mr. Gorman said that premium support would be “a seismic change” in Medicare and could increase costs for many people in the traditional fee-for-service program, fueling a big increase in enrollment in private Medicare Advantage plans.

The Congressional Budget Office analyzed two of the leading options and found that “most beneficiaries who wished to remain in the fee-for-service program would pay much higher premiums, on average, under either alternative.” At the same time, the budget office said the proposal could slow the growth of Medicare spending if more beneficiaries enrolled in lower-cost private plans.

Consumer advocates express several concerns about premium support. Private plans, under pressure to rein in costs, could respond by creating smaller networks of doctors and hospitals. Such plans would then be less attractive to sicker patients who need more health care services.

“What happens if the voucher doesn’t grow with the cost of health care?” asked Leslie B. Fried, a health lawyer at the National Council on Aging, a service and advocacy group. “Will people have more and more out-of-pocket costs?”

The winners?  The wealthy who receive tax cuts and the insurance companies. The losers?  The average American.  Welcome to the Trump/GOP America.