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Posted Thursday, September 10, 2009 3:48 PM

Joe Wilson's Dirty Health-Care Secret

Newsweek


All in the Family: Rep. Joe Wilson (left) and his son, Alan Wilson, who is running for attorney general in South Carolina. Both men, and three of Rep. Wilson’s other sons, get free military medical coverage.

By Adam Weinstein

Poor Joe Wilson. The conservative Republican representative from South Carolina stepped in it Wednesday night when he broke with centuries of decorum by screaming, "You lie!" at President Obama during his health-care speech to a joint session of Congress.

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Cut the man some slack. He's passionate! I know this because he told me, in the sole message that blazes across his campaign Web site: JOE WILSON IS PASSIONATE ABOUT STOPPING GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE!

Except that he's not─at least not when it comes to his, and his family's, government-run health care. As a retired Army National Guard colonel, Wilson gets a lot of benefits (one of which, apparently, was not a full appreciation of the customs, traditions, and courtesies that mandate respect for one's commander in chief). And with four sons in the armed services, the entire Wilson brood has enjoyed multiple generations of free military medical coverage, known as TRICARE.

Yes, it's true. As politicos and town-hall criers debate the finer points of the public option, employer mandates, coverage for undocumented immigrants, and who's more Hitler-like, they seem to miss a larger point: the United States has single-payer health care. It covers 9.5 million active-duty servicemen and women, military retirees, and their dependents─including almost a 10th of all Californians and Floridians, and nearly a quarter of a million residents of Wilson's home state.

Military beneficiaries like Wilson─who, as a retiree, is eligible for lifetime coverage─never have to worry about an eye exam, a CT scan, a prolonged labor, or an open-heart surgery. They have access not only to the military's 133,500 uniformed health professionals, but cooperating private doctors as well─whose fees are paid by the Department of Defense. It's high-quality care, too: surveys from 2007 and 2008 list TRICARE among "the best health insurer(s) in the nation" by customer satisfaction. Yet Wilson insists government-run health care is a problem.

To be fair, Wilson has been consistent in his policymaking if not his personal life: according to his last congressional opponent, Wilson voted 11 times against health care for veterans in eight years, even as he voted "aye" for the Iraq War (during the debate on the war vote, he even called one Democrat "viscerally anti-American"─several times). He voted to cut veterans' benefits─not his own─to make room for President George W. Bush's tax cuts. He repeatedly voted for budgets that slashed funding to the Veterans Administration and TRICARE. And perhaps most bizarrely, he refused─repeatedly─to approve Democratic-led initiatives that would have extended TRICARE coverage to all reservists and National Guard members, even though a disproportionate number of them have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan─and many lost access to their civilian work benefits when they did so.

There's one other notable exception to Wilson's tough-on-government record: In July, when the health-insurance debate just started heating up, he offered an amendment that would exempt TRICARE from any system of employer mandates in a health-care bill. It's not clear whether this is necessary, since most such bills in Congress keep government benefits exempt from the rules as a matter of course. But Wilson took the opportunity to make his stand.

"As a 31-year Army Guard and Reserve veteran, I know the importance of TRICARE," he said in a press release. "The number of individuals who choose to enroll in TRICARE continues to rise because TRICARE is a low cost, comprehensive health plan that is portable and available in some form world-wide." He went on to call TRICARE "world class health care," concluding on a personal note. "I am grateful to have four sons now serving in the military, and I know that their families appreciate the availability of TRICARE," he said.

What does that mean? Nothing─except that Joe Wilson was against government-run health care before he was for it. And now he's against it again. Just not when it comes to his own flesh and blood.

Adam Weinstein, an Iraq veteran, is a freelance journalist. He is uninsured.

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Member Comments

Posted By: henrymassingale (March 14, 2010 at 2:55 PM)

To see the true Health Care Tax forum you must stop thinking in 3-D,This multi tax forum is against a $100 Trillion Dollar system.. ...

To force pay into another system of failures within Health Care Insurance Groups.

This economy will not balance with this concept of a tax forum against the Health Care System. The issue of how to force pay into this system of Health Care may have worked but I am still troubled over the progressive tax forum within this Bill. It covers so many items and Countries that it only forces the system to adjust itself. In some areas, increases against the people and the troubled economy, and in other areas, less effects will be felt.

But this is my big problem, Government Officials seek help and they are to proud to ask us, “the true working force of Government.” It is understandable they have failed the People and within the United States Of America all we ask is to see us as who we are and not try to bring us into this world of the intellectual. I guess our Prime Directive is that of Star Trek, so it must be understood that for millions of people we are just as happy as can be making $13.00 per hour and we have no interest in this world of politics, and how to be a Enstine. Government Officials must understand that there is a level of people within different parts of this Country, that seek to be only that they find to make them happy.

As for this economy well, it is said that the U.S.A. Arms Division has created enough arsenal to destroy every last creature in the world 2 times over,built with tax dollars. This would be funny if not for the irony of it. And now as time has passed Government Officials keep failing. Before 9/11 all the way to today.

As it is in a world of a system, when employees continue to fail, one or two things happen, one; you get fired, two; if you see into a person a good, then it is political correct to implement a penalty or roll back in pay. But this implement of penalty is more favored in the course of action in the Federal Employment World. So how to fix the economy and unite it with the Health Care issue. It would be in the Countries best interest to implement a 10% per cent penalty against every State, County and Government Official within this Matrix of failures. Hey what is that old saying, what is good for the Goose is good for the Gander. I am serous about this, it is past due to show that our Government Officials they have failed, their system failure reaches into this world of warnings that they brush aside as if the information is not worthy noting. From Pearl Harbor to 9/11/2001 to 3/07/2010 of our tax system and Health Care Reform. This 10% per cent penalty should go into the Health Care Forum.

The big problem that Government Officials have is that they have no street credit. President Obama still has some but if he does not take his family and step away from these dueling Parties, that fight over this Health Care Dollar, and stand with Us he will lose all credit from the streets to the county.

President Obama, I would say to you, you have one last chance to regain the hopes and dreams of the American People. To reach out in a concept that states, if there is 250 million people in trouble because of these failures, I would give all my money to them and then I would say to all that I gave money to, “I have no money left, would you all please give me $1.00 back and then I would have $250. million dollars to start all over again.”

As for this $100,trillion dollar in site.............

Results 1 - 10 of about 685,000 for net worth of medicine development industry

Just to show how deep this Health Care Tax split petition reaches. The term split petition is used because of the Tax factor plan that is not seen because of the intent not to show a capital Taxing of close to a $100 trillion dollar package, a yearly system income, not profit.....

Some have stated that I clam to have spiritual in site or something of the sort. I assure you this is not true, so when I state that I asked God to help, it is my way of saying hey Bobby show me how to work on theses Chevy engines. But I do thank you for the consideration. Consider me a cross of Jethro Bodine from the Beverly Hill Billies with my 10th. Grade education and Vin Diesel from the move Pitch Black.

So drop on by and see page 100 at our site and follow the blue pill link

Health Care within a moral value, is to ,

{ GIVE LIFE TO HOPE WHERE THERE IS NONE }

Henry Massingale

FASC Concepts in and for Pay It Forward

www.fascmovement.mysite.com on google. yahoo, and Aol.com

please take the time and visit all my new friends on the net and if you wish to post with FASC Concepts you will be most welcomed. So join us and share your ideas as one in one voice.


Posted By: MekhongKurt (September 21, 2009 at 10:01 AM)

Vision, kbtrpm has a valid point. You're certainly within your right to disagree, but Rep. Wilson has not been consistent. Since he's a retired Arny National Guard Colonel, I certainly don't begrudge him any benefits he has from those decades of service, nor any that his sons receive.

It's true that much of the debate has been about health care for civilians. Not all, but much. There are a number of perfectly valid questions we all need to consider. For instance, H.B. 3200 didn't mandate for illegal aliens -- in fact, it scepfically excluded them -- but it didn't mandate ID checks to make sure illegals wouldn't get health care at our expense, and that is a valid concern. And it was the former that Rep. Wilson meant when he called the President a liar.

Also, some of the labels pinned on the President, such as "socialist," "communist," "fascist," and the like beggar belief -- if one simply checks a good dictionary. Even on Wall Street and in the case of the automobile industry, what the government has done falls short of totalitarian control, by a long shot. (Having lived a number of years in China, I can attest to that from personal experience.) This isn't a matter of opinion, but demonstrable fact.

Let me add I'm hardly anti-Republican; most of my votes over the years have been for Republican candidates, including in the last election. But neither have I ever voted a straight ticket, as I'm more comfortable considering an individual as an individual rather than as a mber of either major party. Or any party, for that matter.

Other details about Rep. Wilson's background also disturb me, but they disturb me with him, not with his entire party. Still others are admirable -- such as his military service. And I don't credit the party for that, either.


Posted By: kbtrpm (September 20, 2009 at 10:45 AM)

Vision: the author does not question the Wilson family health care benefits. He's pointing out that Wilson is putting his own interests first, not his countrymen's. He undeniably has a point. Please wait to distribute insulting labels until you're sure they do not apply to yourself.