Battle of the Bilge

Must Be Election Time

No need to go into deep detail in the introduction for this viral email targeting President Obama for the veterans audience. Battle of the Bilge will be back soon as MOAA once again proves it is a great place to work for and this author will be returning from Paternity leave.

The Email

Wounded Warriors Face New Tax This Independence Day
From John Kartch and Ryan Ellis on Friday, July 2, 2010 12:51 PM

As the nation prepares to celebrate Independence Day with parades and barbecues, America’s veterans face a new tax on prosthetic limbs and other vital medical devices.

The health care overhaul passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama earlier this year contains a new tax on medical devices such as prosthetic limbs, pacemakers, and wheelchairs. This tax, which its proponents claim will raise $20 billion over the next ten years, contains no exemption for the nation’s 22 million veterans. In fact, Senate Democrats specifically refused to exempt veterans from the tax.

On March 24 2010, Senate Democrats rejected an amendment offered by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to the healthcare bill. This amendment (SA 3644) would have prevented the medical device tax from hitting veterans covered by the Veterans Healthcare Program or TRICARE for Life. This amendment was rejected by a vote of 44-54. All but five Democrat senators voted in favor of retaining the tax for veterans.

The medical device tax was one of over twenty new or higher taxes in President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul. This permanent new tax is being collected now.

“On March 24, Senate Democrats had the opportunity to exempt our veterans from Obamacare’s new tax on medical devices such as prosthetic limbs. But 54 Democrats voted against the measure. They chose to side with the tax-and-spend crowd in Washington over our wounded warriors,”said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “This is one of the many reasons Harry Reid and the Democrats did not want Americans to read the 2,500 page health care bill before it was passed.”

In addition to those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Department of Veterans Affairs reports the following number of veterans from America’s wars:

World War II: 2,079,000

Korean War: 2,507,000

Vietnam War: 7,569,000

Desert Shield/Storm: 2,254,000

No, Just No

First of all, the tax that was approved will be levied against the companies that provide the equipment and prosthetics, not against veterans.

For the beneficiaries, the devices are provided without charge through the VA and are not taxed under TRICARE.

Discussion

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“By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder — infinitely prouder — to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys.”
- General Douglas MacArthur

Sacrifice

You won’t see any controversial subjects or email debunking in this post, just a note of appreciation to all fathers, both civilian and especially military. The sacrifice of being away from family members and newborns while deployed is something that most of us can hardly comprehend. While I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to be around for the beginning of my boys’ lives, and look forward in the coming days to the arrival of my first girl, I see and hear every day the pain felt by long deployments and family separation.

To the fathers at home and abroad, thank you for your sacrifices and your commitment to raising a new generation of leaders. A new wave of children born of the digital age and destined to see events as wondrous and monumental as we have and as our parents did before us.

Chandler the Brave

I would like to direct your attention to a touching story of family sacrifice and love through the eyes of a nine year old girl named Chandler Dix. With her father deployed to Afghanistan, she holds the type of courage that illustrates the American spirit. Available at the TheMOAAChannel on YouTube and produced by MOAA’s multimedia guru Haley Crum:

Help Everyone Out

Besides contributing to MOAA’s Educational Assistance program (members will need to sign in, guests are welcome to sign our guestbook), you can take some time and send your representatives in Congress a message asking them to support the Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Bill (H.R. 4899). See this pdf document for the letter that was sent by MOAA’s President VADM Norb Ryan (USN-Ret.), a proud father as well, to every member of Congress for details about why this is so important to get passed without delay, especially before the July 4th recess. Find your legislative representatives at MOAA’s Legislative Action Center here.

Discussion

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Good News Out of Congress

It is rare that I get a chance to say that. But this is definitely good news. I’ll share with you the information provided by our director of Government Relations:

Military Care Exempt from Health Care Reform

Colonel Strogridge provided a Congressional Quarterly article and highlighted the important parts. Reprinted here and is available to CQRollCall subscribers, which can you can sign up for here:

__________________________________________________
Senate Sends President Bill Affirming Military Health Insurance Plans As ‘Minimum Coverage’

By Niels Lesniewski, CQ Staff

The Senate cleared a measure Monday designed to reaffirm that military health benefits programs qualify as minimum coverage under the recently enacted health care overhaul legislation.

The health care overhaul law (PL 111-148) sets up a new definition of “minimum essential coverage.” The law requires all individuals to obtain this minimum level of health insurance or be subject to a penalty tax.

The legislation (HR 4887), which cleared by voice vote, would ensure that certain Defense Department health programs, including Tricare coverage for military families, fit the definition.

In an April 2 message to colleagues, Charles L. Rice, acting director of Tricare, reiterated the Obama administration’s interpretation that the Tricare program already met the essential coverage definition.

“Some unfortunate misinformation began to spread that somehow Tricare benefits would be lost. I continue to work with our public affairs office and beneficiary organizations to squelch those rumors, and I think we are succeeding,” the letter stated. “But, I ask that you and your staffs remain vigilant and respond quickly to basic errors of fact, or misunderstandings.”

Senate budget rules prevented the Tricare protection from being added to the reconciliation law (PL 111-152) that changed provisions of the original health care overhaul.

Rep. Ike Skelton, a Democrat from Missouri, said that although he voted against the health care overhaul legislation, he felt it was his duty as chairman of the Armed Services Committee to protect servicemembers and their families. The House passed the bill, 403-0, on March 20.

Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat representing Virginia and the sponsor of the Senate companion measure (S 3148), wanted to clear the House measure before the two-week spring recess, but senators left Washington without taking up the bill.
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Note: emphasis added

An End to the Email Saga?

We hope so. But reality being what it is, the battle will probably now shift to private armies, gun control and other hot button issues.

Discussion

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Health Care Bill Q&A

In response to rumors and a flood of inquiries, MOAA put their legislative and communications teams together to provide answers to some of the most prevalent questions we’ve received this week. The Questions & Answers given below were transmitted to all subscribers of MOAA’s bi-weekly e-newsletter News Exchange. Anyone wishing to stay on top of important issues such as these are encouraged to subscribe to News Exchange or our weekly Legislative Update by visiting here. And if you’ve held a commission in the military and aren’t a member yet, see the ‘Join MOAA’ link at the top of this page.

General Effects on TRICARE and VA care

Q: I heard the new legislation will roll TRICARE into a massive government health care program. Is this true?
A: Definitely not.

Q: I’ve seen message traffic saying the new legislation poses a “sneak attack on TRICARE.” Is that true?
A: The Senate bill language has been public for months, and we don’t believe there was any intent to disadvantage TRICARE beneficiaries, though it didn’t explicitly state that TRICARE is “qualifying coverage.” Just to make it clear, the House unanimously passed separate legislation on March 20, deeming TRICARE as “qualifying coverage” under the new law. The Senate is expected to pass the same legislation shortly. Defense Secretary Gates has issued a statement asserting that health reform “won’t have a negative effect on TRICARE.” Everyone in the Administration and in the House and Senate, of both parties, agrees TRICARE and VA coverage must be held harmless. But there’s been inevitable debate among legislators about who cares most and who’s doing what to protect troops and vets.

MOAA doesn’t care who gets the credit for making sure TRICARE is protected, and we take political hyperbole on both sides with an appropriate grain of salt.

Q: What does deeming TRICARE as “qualifying coverage” mean?
A: Under the new legislation, people who don’t have qualifying coverage will have to pay a financial penalty. Since TRICARE and VA coverage will be qualifying coverage, those beneficiaries won’t be subject to the penalty.

Q: How about VA care?
A: The new legislation states that care rendered under title 38 of the US Code (VA care) is also qualifying coverage.

Q: I’ve seen message traffic saying that the new law will end TRICARE as of 2014, and that TRICARE beneficiaries will then have to buy other coverage. Is that true?
A: That’s definitely NOT true. There’s nothing like that in the new law.

Q: Can I expect my TRICARE enrollment fee, premiums, deductibles or co-pays to go up because of this legislation?
A: No, there’s nothing in the legislation that would change any TRICARE fees. That said, it’s unrealistic to think that TRICARE fees will never go up, even if retired pay doubles or triples over a retiree’s lifetime. But it will be deficit concerns and DoD budget problems, not national health reform, that drive any future changes in TRICARE fees.

Q: What’s MOAA doing to make sure beneficiaries aren’t negatively affected by the national health reform legislation?
A: MOAA has pushed House and Senate leaders for much of the past year to make sure that language was included in any health care debate to protect the unique nature of military and VA health benefits and prevent taxation of those benefits. We’ve generated more than 100,000 messages to Congress on that topic so far – more than any other association. That strong membership support has gotten results, as the combination of legislation already passed and legislation about to be finished by the Senate substantially accomplishes those objectives.

Effects on TRICARE For Life and Medicare

Q: Is TFL also “qualifying coverage” under the new law?
A: Yes. Both Medicare and TFL are expressly deemed as such under the legislation already passed by both the House and Senate.

Q: I understand Medicare is cut $500 billion under the new law. Won’t that have to cut payments to doctors and threaten TFL?
A: It’s true that the new law reduces Medicare spending by about that much, but most of those changes are relatively less painful ones that probably won’t affect TRICARE or TFL beneficiaries much. They include $118 billion from eliminating the extra subsidy to the Medicare Advantage HMO program (which was sold to Congress as a cost-saver, but actually costs 14% more per person than Standard Medicare), cutting about $150 billion from non-rural hospitals (which the hospital associations say they can handle because expanding insurance coverage to most Americans will mean they won’t have to eat the cost of serving the uninsured), and cutting back abuses in medical equipment (under current systems, Medicare will buy you a wheelchair you may only need a few months, or allow a company to rent you one for life for a permanent condition). These are things most of us would probably push to consider if it were our own money paying for them (which it actually is).

Q: Are you saying that the funding cut won’t affect Medicare beneficiaries at all?
A: No. But the implications are probably longer-term ones than shorter-term ones. The real issue under national health reform is that the money from these Medicare savings will be used to fund expansion of health insurance coverage to those who don’t have it now instead of being used to pay for needed fixes to Medicare. It’s hard to argue that reducing the number of uninsured would be a bad thing. But using the relatively “easy” Medicare savings initiatives to fund that means that when the baby boomers start swamping Medicare and Social Security in the next few years, Congress will be forced to look at more painful ways to fund that need. And that’s something that will be considered by the debt commission that is supposed to make recommendations by Dec. 1 on how to reduce the national debt. It’s that coming commission that we think will really create some tough options for all Americans, and the military is unlikely to escape unscathed. We’ll be keeping an eye on that and keeping our members informed.

Medicare/TRICARE Payments to Doctors

Q: Is it true that the new legislation cuts payments to doctors by 21%?
A: No, that’s NOT true. In fact, it’s PREVIOUS law that calls for a 21% cut in Medicare and TRICARE payments to doctors as of April 1. Congress is working on separate legislation to prevent that from happening.

Q: What’s the status of legislation to reverse the 21% cut in Medicare/TRICARE payments to doctors?
A: The Senate has passed legislation putting off the date of the cut from April 1 until October 1. The House has passed legislation putting it off only until May 1. Our sources tell us the Senate will pass the May 1 legislation. One problem is that Congress is scheduled to take a two-week recess, and the April 1 deadline will occur right in the middle of the recess. So the short-term solution likely will be to “kick the can” for a month and take it up again when Congress returns after recess. Getting a longer-term fix for the doctor payment problem remains MOAA’s #1 health care priority.

Q: Are there any changes in the new law that will affect payments to providers?
A: Yes, there are some changes to periodic “market basket” and other assumptions that affect annual adjustments. These would generally tend to dampen annual increases over time, based on the assumption that productivity will improve over time. This is probably a weak assumption, given past experience with such things. If the expected productivity increases don’t materialize, Congress may have to revisit these assumptions in the future. On the other hand, the new legislation sustains a 5% increase in payments to mental health providers.

Physical, Speech, and Occupational Therapy

Q: Does the new legislation do anything to fix the current $1,860 cap on annual Medicare payments for outpatient physical, speech, and occupational therapy?
A: Yes, the new legislation allows an exception to the cap (until Dec. 31, 2010) for medically necessary therapy. That’s a big relief for accident and stroke victims who can run up big therapy bills quickly. But it means we’ll have to get another extension before the end of the year.

Coverage for Children until Age 26

Q: I understand the new health care bill allows adult children to stay on their parent’s healthcare plan until age 26 if their employers don’t offer insurance. Will TRICARE adopt this policy?
A: Yes, we expect TRICARE will do that.

Q: When would I be able to take advantage of that new TRICARE option?
A: It’s hard to say at this point. In all likelihood, it will take a law change, and the vehicle would be the FY2011 Defense Authorization Act, which probably won’t become law until at least October, if not later. Then, the Pentagon would have to negotiate a change to the TRICARE contract and issue new regulations, and get computers and finance systems changed. For past changes, that has taken anywhere from 12 to 24 months. So it could be 12 to 24 months or more before the change takes effect for TRICARE.

Q: Is there anything I can do now to cover a child who is about to “age out” of TRICARE?
A: Yes. TRICARE already offers coverage for people who lose TRICARE eligibility because of separation or children who lose eligibility because of age. It’s called the Continued Health Care Benefit Program (CHCBP). CHCBP is renewable in quarterly increments and costs about $933 a quarter for an individual – but you have to sign up for it within a pretty short time after losing eligibility. If you have a child who’s now age 25, that child doesn’t qualify for CHCBP.

MOAA’s MEDIPLUS® TRICARE Supplement

Q: Will the new legislation affect my MEDIPLUS® TRICARE supplement in any way?
A: At this point it’s too early to know for sure. We don’t think there will be any negative impact, but we’re working to verify this with our insurance provider.

Discussion

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“The Vulcan Neck Pinch is not half as powerful as the Vulcan Groin Kick, but it’s more politically correct” – Star Trek

Summary

Following the release of the Department of Defense’s report on the Ft. Hood tragedy, there has been ample criticism in the press regarding how DoD handled the situation and the resulting conclusions of the report. Below you will find an email alert that was sent out by Act! for America, an organization started by a Lebanese immigrant that fled her homeland during that nation’s long civil war and is dedicated to rooting out anti-Israeli and anti-American media bias. Both the introduction and the article that it references are opinion pieces and both make valid points about the report and the colossal disaster of management that led to the rampage.

The Email

Ft. Hood Jihadist Massacre Report – “Gutless and Shameful”
How bad is the cancer of political correctness in the Defense Department?

So bad that the 86 page report on the Ft. Hood jihadist massacre mentions “Islam” or any of its derivatives only once—in a footnote.

So bad that CNN commentator Jack Cafferty called it a “joke.”

Unfortunately, the only ones laughing are the Islamists.

They must be looking at our military and political leadership and thanking Allah for their good fortune. It’s easy to envision discussions among Islamists where they tell each other “surely Allah is with us; the infidel leaders are so blind and stupid they won’t even acknowledge who is fighting them!”

Ralph Peters’ column below is RIGHT ON POINT!

We believe American outrage at this suicidal level of political correctness is only going to grow. Let us resolve together to make 2010 the year that “main street America” shouted back at Washington that we’ve had enough!!

Hood Massacre Report Gutless and Shameful

By RALPH PETERS

January 16, 2010

There are two basic problems with the grotesque non-report on the Islamist- terror massacre at Fort Hood (released by the Defense Department yesterday):

* It’s not about what happened at Fort Hood.

* It avoids entirely the issue of why it happened.

Rarely in the course of human events has a report issued by any government agency been so cowardly and delusional. It’s so inept, it doesn’t even rise to cover-up level.

“Protecting the Force: Lessons From Fort Hood” never mentions Islamist terror. Its 86 mind-numbing pages treat “the alleged perpetrator,” Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as just another workplace shooter (guess they’re still looking for the pickup truck with the gun rack).

The report is so politically correct that its authors don’t even realize the extent of their political correctness — they’re body-and-soul creatures of the PC culture that murdered 12 soldiers and one Army civilian.

Reading the report, you get the feeling that, jeepers, things actually went pretty darned well down at Fort Hood. Commanders, first responders and everybody but the latest “American Idol” contestants come in for high praise.

The teensy bit of specific criticism is reserved for the “military medical officer supervisors” in Maj. Hasan’s chain of command at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. As if the problem started and ended there.

Unquestionably, the officers who let Hasan slide, despite his well-known wackiness and hatred of America, bear plenty of blame. But this disgraceful pretense of a report never asks why they didn’t stop Hasan’s career in its tracks.

The answer is straightforward: Hasan’s superiors feared — correctly — that any attempt to call attention to his radicalism or to prevent his promotion would backfire on them, destroying their careers, not his.

Hasan was a protected-species minority. Under the PC tyranny of today’s armed services, no non-minority officer was going to take him on.

This is a military that imposes rules of engagement that protect our enemies and kill our own troops and that court-martials heroic SEALs to appease a terrorist. Ain’t many colonels willing to hammer the Army’s sole Palestinian-American psychiatrist.

Of course, there’s no mention of political correctness by the panel. Instead, the report settles for blinding flashes of the obvious, such as “We believe a gap exists in providing information to the right people.” Gee, really? Well, that explains everything. Money well spent!

Or “Department of Defense force protection policies are not optimized for countering internal threats.” Of course not: You can’t stop an internal threat you refuse to recognize.

The panel’s recommendations? Wow. “Develop a risk-assessment tool for commanders.” Now that’s going to stop Islamist terrorists in their tracks.

The Fort Hood massacre didn’t reflect an intelligence failure. The intelligence was there, in gigabytes. This was a leadership failure and an ethical failure, at every level. Nobody wanted to know what Hasan was up to. But you won’t learn that from this play-pretend report.

The sole interesting finding flashes by quickly: Behind some timid wording on pages 13 and 14, a daring soul managed to insert the observation that we aren’t currently able to keep violence-oriented religious extremists from becoming chaplains. (Of course, they’re probably referring to those darned Baptists . . .)

To be fair, there’s a separate, classified report on Maj. Hasan himself. But it’s too sensitive for the American people to see. Does it even hint he was a self-appointed Islamist terrorist committing jihad? I’ll bet it focuses on his “personal problems.”

In the end, the report contents itself with pretending that the accountability problem was isolated within the military medical community at Walter Reed. It wasn’t, and it isn’t. Murderous political correctness is pervasive in our military. The medical staff at Walter Reed is just where the results began to manifest themselves in Hasan’s case.

Once again, the higher-ups blame the worker bees who were victims of the policy the higher-ups inflicted on them. This report’s spinelessness is itself an indictment of our military’s failed moral and ethical leadership.

We agonize over civilian casualties in a war zone but rush to whitewash the slaughter of our own troops on our own soil. Conduct unbecoming.

Origins

The article from Ralph Peters appeared January 16th, 2010 in the New York Post and can be found here. The DoD report on the massacre, entitled ‘Protecting the Force: Lessons from Ft. Hood’, which is a very large .pdf file and will be tough to download unless you use broadband service, is here.

Evaluation

While MOAA as an organization has not taken a stance on the DoD report, Battle of the Bilge found much to agree with in the New York Post article. Although the article under represents the recommendations of the panel, the general theme that political correctness and the failure of so many people that could have stopped this from ever happening is undeniable. The statement that there were gigabytes of intelligence data that were missed or ignored is spot on. Nidal Hasan was a radical Islamic extremist and his actions were motivated by his religious beliefs, but our nation and our military have been ingrained with the concept of tolerance that sometimes makes us blind to obvious warning signs.

It is true that the word Islam is only mentioned once and in a footnote, and it is also true that ‘Muslim’ does not appear anywhere in the report. But then again neither do ‘Christian’, ‘Buddhist’, ‘Hindu’ or ‘Atheist’. It is standard run of the mill PC from DoD reports and in most cases, it is prudent to exclude specific groups. But we are not at war with nations that are composed primarily of those religions. Like it or not, we are at war with Islam, or rather Islam is at war with us. It is not the entire population of Muslims, some are very much on our side in this civilization clash. But the extremists are the ones that cause the damage, and a religion, ethnic group or organization that can not control its extremist elements must be held accountable for their actions. Where is the public outrage on the Muslim street to the actions of Nidal Hasan and the failed perpetrator of the Christmas day airline plot? There is none, and the silence speaks much louder than words.

The US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs had much of the same reaction to the report as Ralph Peters and I do:

“I am encouraged that the Department recognizes the need to update its policies to protect servicemembers and welcome the Department’s intention to hold accountable those who failed to take necessary protective action.

“I am disappointed, however, that the report does not adequately recognize the specific threat posed by violent Islamist extremism to our military, a threat directly addressed by Senator Collins and me in a January 13 letter to Secretary Gates. I believe firmly that if DoD educates its personnel about violent Islamist extremism – and how terrorists distort the Islamic faith to promote violence – we will increase trust between the thousands of Muslim-Americans serving honorably in the military and their colleagues.

“This omission underscores the need for our Committee’s independent investigation. Unfortunately, the Department of Defense has been less than forthcoming in providing us access to the documents and witnesses we require. Now that the DoD review is public, the Department must cooperate fully with our Committee so that we can fulfill our constitutional duty to determine our vulnerabilities and correct them.”

I don’t believe that the report was a ‘whitewash’ but I do believe that it was watered down to the point of being ineffective. The Executive Summary list of recommendations (found on page 7), however, are important going forward:



Yet, at the same time, three findings in the report come close to violating the ‘no religious test for employees of the government’ clause in the Constitution:

Finding 2.3: DoD standards for denying requests for recognition as an ecclesiastical endorser of chaplains may be inadequate…. This limited authority to deny requests for designation as ecclesiastical endorsers could allow undue improper influence by individuals with a propensity toward violence…..

Finding 2.7: DoD policy regarding religious accommodation lacks the clarity necessary to help commanders distinguish appropriate religious practices from those that might indicate a potential for self-radicalization….

Finding 4.9: The lack of published guidance for religious support in mass casualty incidents hampers integration of religious support to installation emergency management plans.

While it seems on the surface perfectly practical given the state of the world and the reality of Islamic terrorism, ignoring our Constitution can’t be the reaction to a tragedy like this. Because the next group they put limitations on may be one more broadly followed by Americans. First they came for…

Additional Sources

New York Post Op-Ed
Act! for America
Religious Clause Blog
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Reaction

Discussion

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