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Old 03-24-2010, 09:01 AM
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BLUEHAWK BLUEHAWK is offline
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"... Republicans in Congress for offering no constructive alternatives to the health care legislation that would have addressed this issue? Or even offered any course of action in the 10 years they were in the majority?"

a. The Republicans in Congress certainly DID repeatedly ad nauseum offer hundreds and hundreds of proposed wordings in every single relevant committee and assembly of both houses starting over a year ago right up to this very moment in the Senate - I know they did because I watched them do it every day on C-SPAN - most of the time the Democrat response was and remains to declare GOP suggestions as being "not germaine."

b. Most likely the VFW position relates nicely to the findings of the CBO (which I "off-topicly" offered yesterday) wherein we see that there is absolutely NO guarantee of any kind that anything promised in the legislation, presumably including Tri-Care and VA assurances, can be expected to remain as is or stable.

c. I also imagine that what the VVA and Legion are attempting to do, at best, is to be optimistic - with the certain acknowledgment that anything which does in fact threaten VA benefits always reliably meets with a firestorm of protest from far and wide.

d. As far as what the GOP did and did not accomplish for vets during the Bush administration, you and I Gimpy have never and will never agree about that topic. I feel they and the President did the best they could, and did in fact enact some very helpful measures.
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  #12  
Old 03-25-2010, 09:07 AM
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Default My Dear Mr. Hawk

Quote:
Originally Posted by BLUEHAWK View Post
"...
d. As far as what the GOP did and did not accomplish for vets during the Bush administration, you and I Gimpy have never and will never agree about that topic. I feel they and the President did the best they could, and did in fact enact some very helpful measures.

It seems as though you're having a "senior moment" or a complete lapse of memory. Let me "refresh" it for you.

It’s not uncommon for Presidents to embellish their accomplishments upon leaving office, but George W. Bush, who exited the White House leaving the country in the worst shape since Herbert Hoover, went a step further, moving past exaggeration into outright lying.

And, it appears you've bought into those lies just like he hoped many uninformed vets may have done.

You want "proof"......here's just SOME of the Bush Record on VA Funding.

For his part, Bush stacked the VA with political cronies, such as former Republican National Committee chairman Jim Nicholson, who as VA Secretary defended a budget measure that sought major cuts in staffing for healthcare and at the Board of Veterans Appeals; slashed funding for nursing home care; and blocked four legislative measures aimed at streamlining the backlog of veterans benefits claims.

Of the 84,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder by VA up through 2008, only half, about 42,000, had their disability claim approved by VA. Instead of expediting PTSD claims, Bush's political appointees at VA actively fought against mental health claims.


Bush's appointees also obstructed scientific research into the causes of Gulf War illnesses dating back 18 years to Operation Desert Storm and opposed medical research on treatment for 210,000 of those veterans.

As for funding, Bush proposed a 0.5 percent budget increase for the VA for fiscal year 2006, which amounted to a “cruel mockery” of Bush’s promises to do everything to support veterans and soldiers, Rep. Lane Evans, D-Illinois, said at the time. His propposals EVERY year during his administration were met with howls of outrage and disgust by ALL the major service organizations (VSO's)......Seen any of then hollering about "funding" since the Dems have taken over? NO.............they have ALL been PRAISING the Dems and Obama for their "funding" budgets for the VA. Did THAT happen under Bush?

NO, and all the "spin" you want to put on it can't make that true!

Evans called Bush’s proposed budget increase for the VA “grossly inadequate,” saying it would force the VA to “ration” healthcare to veterans.

VA officials had testified in 2005 that the agency needed at least a 13 percent increase to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of war veterans wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan and others who needed long-term mental health care.

In early 2007, the Washington Post put a spotlight on the human consequences resulting from the combination of Bush’s wars and the budget squeeze.

The Post published a series of articles documenting the substandard conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which is located only 4.7 miles from the White House. Wounded vets were housed in rooms with moldy walls, leaky plumage and an infestation of vermin, underscoring how out of touch Bush had become regarding the nation’s veterans.


In May 2007, the AP revealed that while Nicholson was pinching pennies on treatment costs and coping with a $1.3 billion budget shortfall, he awarded “$3.8 million in bonuses to top executives in fiscal 2006″ — many as much as $33,000.

Simultaneously, Bush was resisting congressional efforts (from mostly Democrats) to beef up the VA’s budget. In May 2007, Bush threatened to veto legislation that sought a 10 percent—$3.2 billion—increase, calling it too expensive. Bush proposed a 2 percent increase, far below what lawmakers and VA officials said was needed to treat a dramatic increase in traumatic brain injury and PTSD cases.

After Congress passed the legislation with the higher VA spending, Bush backed down on his veto threat but that was largely due to the fact that every Republican in the Senate with the exception of Jim DeMint of South Carolina, supported the measure.

Amid the growing scandals (remember the SS number and medical records fiasco?) and inept management, Nicholson resigned in July 2007.


Even after Nicholson’s resignation, the Department of Veterans Affairs continued to be buffeted by scandals during the Bush years, including a cover-up in an epidemic of veterans’ suicides and attempted suicides.

Last year, internal VA e-mails surfaced that showed how top agency officials tried to conceal the information from the public about the sudden increase in suicides and attempted suicides among veterans that were treated or sought help at VA hospitals around the country.


And last November, internal watchdogs discovered 500 benefits claims in shredding bins at the 41 of the 57 regional VA offices around the country that went back years into the Bush presidency.


Paul Sullivan, the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, a veterans’ advocacy group that sued the VA in federal court, said attempts by the White House to portray Bush as an advocate for veterans is beyond shameful.


“Bush was the worst failure for our veterans since Hoover,” Sullivan said, expressing shock that the President “would shamefully continue his legacy of lies to the American people as he and his political cronies left office on Jan. 20 last year.”

Sullivan disputed some of Bush’s claims as misleading, such as the assertion that he doubled funding for the VA. “However, President Bush failed to disclose that the number of veterans seeking VA healthcare doubled, from 2.7 million to 5.5 million, and that rising healthcare inflation actually resulted in a net decrease in spending per veteran by VA during the past eight years,” he said.

“If not for the intervention of Congress to substantially increase VA funding beyond Bush's inadequate budget requests, especially in the past two years (the Dems again, remember?....Just asking....Gimp), the situation would have deteriorated from a serious crisis to a catastrophe at VA.”


Sullivan, who worked at the VA for five years as a project manager, said Bush failed to the implement the VA’s proposed Mental Health Strategic Plan, a program aimed at identifying and quickly treating veterans suffering from major depression and were on the verge of suicide.


“Without implementation, funding, and oversight of the plan, several suicidal Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans were illegally refused emergency medical care by VA,” Sullivan said. “Veterans for Common Sense brought this issue to the attention of VA, and VA refused to act.

“Therefore, VCS sued VA for turning away suicidal veterans. After we filed our lawsuit, and only after we filed our lawsuit, the VA began a suicide prevention hotline. In the first 15 months of operation, the hotline received 85,000 calls and rescued more than 2,100 suicidal veterans.”

As costly as the treatment of Iraq and Afghan war veterans already has become, Bush has left an even greater budget hole for his successors.

In the book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, authors Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes wrote that future treatment of veterans would continue adding to the total cost of Bush’s conflicts and would put extraordinary stresses on the VA.

“Even in 2000, before the war,” they wrote, the VA was the subject of numerous Government Accountability Office studies that “identified long-standing problems, including large backlogs of pending claims, lengthy processing time for initial claims, high rates of error in processing claims, and inconsistency across regional offices.”

But the problems only got worse. “In a 2005 study,” Stiglitz and Blimes wrote, “the GAO found that the time to complete a veteran’s claim varied from 99 days at the Salt Lake City Office to 237 days in Honolulu. In a 2006 study, GAO found that 12 percent of claims were inaccurate.”


And the Bush’s critics, however, are not willing to so easily forget.

“Contrary to his Administration's spin, George W. Bush's legacy on veterans is one of shameful neglect,” author Glantz said. “Rather than care for the tens of thousands of American service members wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan and all our other Vets, the Bush Administration had thrown up a series of barriers to prevent veterans from getting the care they need.”

Simply put – White House propaganda aside – veterans’ healthcare had become worse, not better, under Bush’s leadership.

And.........THOSE are the FACTS --- JACK!


Gimp
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"We have shared the incommunicable experience of war..........We have felt - we still feel - the passion of life to its top.........In our youth our hearts were touched with fire"

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  #13  
Old 03-25-2010, 10:21 AM
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Steve,

I appreciate your post and understand you are trying
to get the facts out there as you see them. What
we are looking for is legal language that stands the
test of time after all of us are dead and gone.

This is off topic but I wanted to give you a link to
a website that might help you prolong the life of
that one kidney you have left. I'm in third stage
kidney failure and went looking for a diet on my
own that might help me and certainly won't hurt
me. (The only advice I got from my GP was to
drink tons more water. My normal intake at that
time was sixty four ounces. The increased intake
over sixty four ounces didn’t work out to
well for me. )

This site has some great help including video's and
forums. Some videos explain the different stages
of what is known as chronic kidney disease (from what
I have read there are some disagreements on this term).
Check it out if you have time.

http://www.davita.com/

Take care,

Arrow

Escapee from the political machinations of all who are fiscally irresponsible (on both sides of the isle)
jeopardizing the future of my children and the life they have both worked so hard to build.
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Old 03-25-2010, 11:40 AM
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Thanks for the link to that site, great info. I appreciate it.

I too am in stage 3 kidney disease. My doctors have me on a fairly strict diet. My disease is two fold causation, partly from the GSW I received in Nam and in part to Type II Diabetes related to AO (which is now under control....thank God!).

The diet plan seems to be working in conjunction with meds treatment, I have lost about 40 lbs. these past 5 months and am now back to my old "fighting weight" as my better half likes to call it.

My kidneys don't seem to be processing potassium very well for some as yet undetermined reason which has caused a Viatimin D deficiency that is creating some bone/calicium problems which is afecting my hip replacement of 13 years ago. They are now checking my Thyroid function regularly in order to try and find out if this is contributing to the other problems.

If it ain't one thing, it's another. Oh well, it could be worse I suppose. I could have been one of the names on that "wall' in D.C. but for the Grace of God and the bad "aim" of a little slant-eyed fellow more than 42 years ago.

I thank God every single day for the time I've had since that day in November 67. I am truly blessed.

And, I really understand your (and others) consternation regarding the recent health care bill. I suppose I'm just not as worried over this stuff as you are. Hopefully we'll all come out better for this measures passing.

Thanks again, and be well,

Gimp
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Gimpy

"MUD GRUNT/RIVERINE"


"I ain't no fortunate son"--CCR


"We have shared the incommunicable experience of war..........We have felt - we still feel - the passion of life to its top.........In our youth our hearts were touched with fire"

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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  #15  
Old 03-25-2010, 01:33 PM
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Thumbs up

Steve thumbs up on the success of your diet. Diabetes and uncontrolled blood
pressure are two of the main culprits in problems causing poor kidney function.
My problem is controlling my blood pressure and a long time finding a medication
that worked for me. We may not agree on some things but we both know we are
truly blessed. All of us have had forty some years longer than those we loved and lost.

What are we going to do now, Lt? Lt said, “Keep movin”


All the best to you and yours,


Arrow
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Old 03-25-2010, 06:13 PM
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Thumbs up

" At a young age our hearts were touched by fire ". Blessed to be part of this family
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  #17  
Old 03-25-2010, 09:23 PM
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Arrow Some Gave All

"I thank God every single day for the time I've had since that day in November 67. I am truly blessed" ~Gimpy~ "Blessed to be part of this family" ~DMZ-LT~



Follow link to PF Veterans Memoriam:

http://www.veteransmemoriam.com/
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