Supporting The Troops
I was going to do this on Veterans Day, and then decided to avoid that. This is about all of the lip service that the Republicans pay to military, and then turn around and stab them in the back.
The Pensacola News Journal ran a Tom Philpott piece, Senator puts hold on veteran’s caregiver bill, about one of the worst offenders in Congress, Ensign’s C Street roommate, Tom Coburn† of Oklahoma.
What is Coburn’s objection? He thinks it’s a waste of money for the Veterans Administration to give a stipend to family members of disabled veterans who act as caregivers.
Existing law enables veterans to get in-home assistance. Studies show that such assistance is cheaper than having them in VA facilities. Further study has determined that it is even cheaper to offer training to family members and give them a small stipend to provide most of the assistance. Home health care is not always available near the homes of the veterans, and it is extremely expensive to pay for health care workers when most of their time is spent traveling to and from patients. Rather than being a waste of money, this is a way for the VA to save money, and to avoid having to build new facilities for all of the new disabled veterans returning from the conflicts in Southwest Asia.
As an accountant and a doctor [Ob-Gyn] you would think that Coburn would understand about “penny wise, and pound foolish” as well as “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, but that wouldn’t be in line with his adopted persona as a “conservative”. [During the 110th Congress, Coburn put holds on 90 bills.]
† One of the Family guys.
2 comments
Karma requires that Coburn spend his declining years at home, with no help from any caregivers for the ailment he will suffer, which I believe is technically known by doctors as a “pain in the butt.” If he doesn’t already have this problem, I’m sure many people would be happy to kick-start it. But you know the saying: what goes brown, comes brown.
Coburn is just such a total scumbag. He is pornographic in the sense that he has no socially redeeming characteristics. This is a guy who would make Ebenezer Scrooge [pre-spirits] seem like a humanitarian.