Posted on 12/03/2016 9:59:49 AM PST by NonValueAdded
Excellent idea....
Donald gives vets a double whammy....Sinise AND his COO.
If so, once again, your post was poorly written and not very well thought out. Obviously you don't know there's a lot more to "VA benefits" than just healthcare. If you were a veteran, you'd know this.
If you are talking about getting rid of those aforementioned VA programs, well, here I go getting uncivil again.
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My point is that there's a lot more to VA benefits than just healthcare. I got my college education, in part, because of the GI Bill. I got my house by taking advantage of my right to a VA home loan. There's a lot more to "VA benefits" than just healthcare, and all of us who have served, even peacetime guys who served two years and got out with their bodies 100% intact, deserve those benefits.
When know-nothing civilians start talking sh*t about "VA benefits", they oughta know what they're talking about first.
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"You want second rate medical services for vets when they could be receiving top notch services at a REAL hospital."
How the hell do you know what I want? I want quality healthcare for veterans more than you do...'cause I AM one! 30% disabled at that. Trust me, I know all about waiting for years to be seen by an orthopedist or whoever else. I don't bitch about it 'cause there are guys a helluva lot worse off than I am.
Don't tell me what I want and don't want, 'cause unless you've been there, you have no idea.
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I don’t expect you to feel otherwise. Our military should be well enough paid to attract whom we need and sparingly used. But decades-future benefits and two classes of citizenry IMO are a bad idea.
Education benefits are perfect, in that most military are in on relatively short-term service and need to find utility in the civilian world. But full retirement after 20 years isn’t something we can or should afford for any public sector employees. Certainly private sector employers can’t afford it—with defined contribution the current reality there.
And everyone should have access to the healthcare they need—whether through insurance, if they can afford it and opt for it, or Medicaid/Medicare like everyone else.
Military “insurance” should include lifetime care for anything incurred while on duty. Otherwise, we really need to have a single class of citizens in the country.
I know all about waiting for years to be seen by an orthopedist or whoever else.....If the money was spent from the VA wisely, you wouldn’t HAVE to wait years, nut. You’d go to a private physician. Don’t contact me anymore, Scout, calvary h’o.
In the future, I'll gladly avoid posting to you, provided you cease talking out your a** about things you don't know.
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"But full retirement after 20 years isn’t something we can or should afford for any public sector employees."
We're not just public sector employees, dadgummit! We're soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, not slack-ass retirees from the Social Security Administration, DMV, or the local elementary school. Even PAC clerks, cooks, chaplain's aides, and other REMFs risk more just getting through Basic and AIT than 90% of all civilian public sector pukes will risk their entire lives! That's not to even mention if we have to deploy, or deploy to a combat theater. A two-year peacetime REMF has faced more hardship and adversity -- for your benefit -- than 90% of civilian pukes will ever know. Yes, we owe them retirement benefits from the moment they retire. If they don't do their 20 or receive a medical retirement, then we owe them the rest of their benefits, to include medical care, on a worst case first basis, as it is now.
Even that two year, peacetime enlistee has done more for this country than most civilians will do in their entire lives. God knows they/we weren't paid squat for their/our service and sacrifice. The very least we can do for that two-year enlistee is help him if he breaks his leg.
"And everyone should have access to the healthcare they need—whether through insurance, if they can afford it and opt for it, or Medicaid/Medicare like everyone else."
Horsesh*t. Medical care isn't a right...not everyone deserves it. You should have to earn it, and if you don't earn it, you should have to pay for it unless there's some charity out there who will pay it for you out of the goodness of their hearts. But veterans have earned it. Medicaid? How's about this...we eliminate Medicaid altogether and put that money into the VA. Or better yet, put that money into "vouchers at market rates". Maybe if there weren't that Medicaid safety net, people would be more motivated to get off their a**es and get to work, and not have 6-7 kids they can't afford, and we have to pay for!
Again, this is why we need the draft back. Civilians who have no idea what they're talking about are making decisions that affect those of us who have put our a**es on the line for our country. We need more than the 5 or 10%, or whatever the pitifully small number of people in our society who actually have skin in the game. Better yet, let's do like Plato (I think) outlined in The Republic, and make citizenship an earned right. Only citizens could vote, and only those who earned it, through military service for one, would be given citizenship. Too many people talk about what the military and veterans deserve, and they have no friggin' clue what they're talking about, 'cause they've never even taken so much as one step in boots.
/rant
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I just totally disagree with you. The military is a job/career and compensation should be in accordance with that. We used to have war fighters who didn’t think they should be on the dole at everyone else’s expense for 50 years in compensation for a couple of years deployment—or some sort of right to “retire” from any gainful work at age 40. I am sorry to see what such benefits are making of them. Again, any military-related injuries should be covered for life, as should generous education and training benefits to help to move them into their next professional life.
And access to healthcare, again, should be universal—whether paid for in the private market alone (via catastrophic insurance or simple payment) or also through subsidy for the disabled and indigent.
Mortgages should be handled on the regular private sector market—as they should for everyone, with loans calibrated for risk and appropriate incentive for borrowers to make themselves good risks.
I find your perspective unfortunate on both counts.
Oh, and I would pay the military better while they are on duty—in accordance with both what the market demands and a decent standard simply for being in the military.
Wrong. Pushing papers and taking coffee breaks at the Department of Agriculture is a job/career. Military service is a job/career that can get you killed protecting those who don't deserve your service. It can get you killed in more ways than you could imagine, whether in war or peacetime, whether deployed to Afghanistan or back in the training areas of Ft. Hood or Ft. Benning. If compensation were truly "in accordance" with the hardships and sacrifices made by the people who protect you, veterans would be living in the Ritz Carlton and getting their healthcare from the Mayo Clinic for the rest of their lives.
Service members and veterans deserve more because they do/have done more than civilian pukes, who risk nothing, and spend every Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and birthday with their loved ones. Those who never miss a Little League game or dance recital, much less an entire Little League season because they're chewing sand and picking up their buddies' broken body parts off some God-forsaken Afghan goat trail. Yeah, tell them they have a job/career no more worthy of consideration than Joe Bob down at the DMV.
"We used to have war fighters who didn’t think they should be on the dole at everyone else’s expense for 50 years in compensation for a couple of years deployment—or some sort of right to “retire” from any gainful work at age 40."
BZZZZZZZZZZT...wrong again, civilian. We still do. I would hazard a bet that most active duty service members have no idea what their benefits will be once they leave the service. That's not why they serve. It speaks very lowly of you that you'd think that about those who keep you safe.
No, what we used to have is a grateful society that understood the risks these people take on a daily basis, and the sacrifices they make that civilians can't even begin to fathom. That grateful society used to give back to these fine Americans without second guessing the rightness of what they were doing. A lot has changed in the last 40 years. That's why we need to go back to the draft, so ungrateful civilians can understand firsthand what service members go through on their behalf, so they can sleep peacefully and comfortably at night.
Either that, or we need to be invaded by the Chicoms, the Muzzies, or the diseased scum of Central and South America, so you civilian pukes could see what you were being protected from. Maybe then you'd feel a bit grateful. It'd be too late, but hey, as the song says, you never miss your water 'til the well runs dry.
"And access to healthcare, again, should be universal—whether paid for in the private market alone (via catastrophic insurance or simple payment) or also through subsidy for the disabled and indigent."
Wow. That's very...socialist...of you. Are you sure you've been a 9-year Lurker here at FReep, or at DU? Universal? Like "universal health care"? You're on the wrong forum to be pushing that crap. I guess a college education should be "universal" too, eh Bernie?
"Mortgages should be handled on the regular private sector market—as they should for everyone, with loans calibrated for risk and appropriate incentive for borrowers to make themselves good risks."
Holy cow!!! You have the guts to talk about "risks", when you ignore the risks taken on your behalf by people better and more courageous than you? Dang, you have some nerve!
VA home loans are a leftover from that aforementioned grateful nation, to say thanks to those who have gone over and above the call of a citizen, to protect those too lazy, worthless, cowardly and sorry to protect themselves. In other words, it's a right I earned because I protected you. Some people deserve consideration over and above you, because they've done more good on society's behalf than you. Those people are called service members and veterans.
"I find your perspective unfortunate on both counts."
I find your lack of gratitude toward those whose service and protection you don't deserve nauseating.
"Oh, and I would pay the military better while they are on duty—in accordance with both what the market demands and a decent standard simply for being in the military."
Wow...is that ever pathetic. You don't understand there is no "market value" for military service. You simply can't apply civilian rules to the military. All your Ayn Randian, Cato Institute libertarian, open market theories can't begin to factor in the intangibles of military service. They can't begin to come up with a template to compensate for the years that military life -- even peacetime military life -- beats out of young bodies. All the lofty, free market theories in the world can't come close to factoring in the soul that's sucked out of a young soldier, sailor, airman or Marine who's told they can't go home to help a parent or spouse cope with cancer, or some other life-threatening illness or injury, because they're deployed to some God-forsaken hellhole you couldn't conjure up in your worst nightmare. All that, so 9-Year Lurker can flop comfortably on his couch and watch college football with his buddies, or go to his little girl's dance recital. What's the "market value" of that?
Don't even try to patronize them by saying they need to be paid more...they already know that, and talk -- civilian talk -- is cheap.
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