Bilking Soldiers

The White House may be planning to increase the death benefit paid to the families of our servicepeople killed in defense of our nation, but God help 'em if they live:

President Bush's budget would more than double the co-payment charged to many veterans for prescription drugs and would require some to pay a new fee of $250 a year for the privilege of using government health care, administration officials said Sunday.

Anyone else see a problem here? I mean, health care costs are going up all over the place, sure, but we're at war and we're asking our servicepeople and their families to shoulder more of the burden? I think they're doing plenty, thank you very much, and I think that if some of our troops need some pharmacological assistance upon returning home to readjust to life in the world, it should be cheap verging on free.

In truth, the copays will remain lower than, say, mine, (the copay would double to $15 for a one-month supply of a prescription drug) but when you're talking about veterans, you're talking about a lot of people who are older and may have service-related disabilities and be on multiple medications.

Still, there's just something that feels wrong to me about having your Secretary of Defense acknowledge that the services are "stressed" on Sunday and on Monday you release a budget that increases the healthcare costs for the men and women returning from the war zone that is stressing the services.

Here's a thought: how about we close some corporate tax loopholes and tack a $5000 "thanks for helping out" tax on all incomes over $500,000. Surely that would more than equal the amount generated by a VA price increase.