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After a brief but intense firestorm that resulted in the quickest policy reversal in recent memory, President Obama has decided not to charge wounded warriors' insurance companies for the troops' care. There are plenty of lessons here for both the administration and everyone else whose modus operandi is to decide first and think later.
The administration estimated that the scheme would have produced more than $500 million in savings, but the ancillary effects either were not considered or---much worse---were considered but dismissed as irrelevant or secondary to collecting the money.
Among the many dysfunctions the abandoned policy would have produced is former troops' being rejected for private medical insurance because their wounds are pre-existing conditions. And because the troops could receive no medical insurance, neither would their families. This is not the way to treat men and women who have sacrificed for the defense of the rest of us.
The effect is disturbing enough, but the callousness of the assumption---that the welfare of our veterans is a mere commodity to be traded---is much more distressing. Furthermore, the episode uncovers a large measure of hypocrisy in an administration that has billed itself as decidedly more sensitive than the last. For their part, members of Congress responded with uncharacteristically welcome right-mindedness, many of them vowing that the measure would meet uncompromising resistance and certain defeat.
Many of the missteps that the Obama administration has made are typical of the teething problems encountered by every new crew, and the management stumbles have been magnified by the severity of many of the problems confronting this nation. Expectations were high, however, that Obama would surround himself with clear-thinking people who would solve problems rather than create more of them, but so far the level of technical skill and leadership among the president's cadre has been disappointing, and he has been poorly served by those closest to him.
And for our troops, we should deliver nothing but the best. Foremost among the assumptions that should have been intuitively obvious in the West Wing is that the government of the United States, and no one else, is responsible for repairing the war damage done to our service members' bodies.
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Thanks. As much as an extremist as I am---and as we all tend to be on some subjects, especially as we get older---I find it useful to cut to basics, something we all learned as brand new soldiers.
