How Bernie fought for veterans, becoming a case study in successful negotiation.

[merrily]

All the players, from Congress to the White House, agreed on two overarching goals amid the veterans health crisis: to assure that veterans received timely care and to give authorities at the Department of Veterans Affairs the tools they needed to fire bad apples. Despite that clarity, however, the process was anything but straightforward.

Both the Sanders-McCain and Sanders-Miller negotiations were to a large extent a proxy for the two parties’ epic, long-running battle over the size and role of the federal government and, in particular, its involvement in health care. Furthermore, some of the conditions the American Political Science Association has identified as ideal for reaching compromise were conspicuously absent. Sanders did not have a personal relationship with McCain or Miller. The negotiators were operating in a fast-moving environment rife with opportunities for mistrust and misunderstanding. The process was closely watched and occasionally explosive. At one point the media reported that prospects for a deal had disintegrated.


........


McCain introduced a major bill in early June that embodied his party’s response to the scandal. His bill put a new issue on the table—giving a choice of private care not just to veterans who could not get timely appointments but also to those who lived far away from VA medical facilities. Over in the House, Miller saw the McCain provision, liked it, and added it to a fast-moving House bill that passed 426-0 a few days later.

Things were more complicated in the Senate. Sanders had been focused on fixing scheduling and strengthening the VA internally, and only learned about the distance idea when it showed up in McCain’s bill. As one Democratic aide put it, “This was not an element of the initial crisis. Distance was not necessarily the problem that everyone had been talking about. This was adding a new dimension.”

...........


The roots of the problem, as usual, were conflicting core philosophies of government and wariness of the other side. “Sanders had the view that McCain was trying to take away the VA and that was his ultimate intention. McCain had the view that Sanders was always going to prop up the VA and never accept any criticism of it,” says Ian DePlanque, chief lobbyist for the American Legion, the country’s largest veterans organization. Neither was actually the case, he says, but that was the impression the pair gave. McCain’s statements were focused on choice and private care, while “if you look at Sanders’ statements, he wanted to use the VA as a model for what single-payer could look like across the country. He has had a tendency to want to show the best of it.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/how-bernie-sanders-fought-for-our-veterans-119708_Page2.html#ixzz3gWWnj2Uw


Full case study of the negotiation on behalf of veterans here:


http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/07/profiles-negotiation-veterans-lawrence


Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/how-bernie-sanders-fought-for-our-veterans-119708_Page2.html#ixzz3gWWERwpe

Sounds effective to me.

[marym625]

1. K&R!

[merrily]

2. Thanks. I did not see Morning Joe yesterday, but, apparently, McCain was on and said

the Bernie knows how to work with others to get things done.

Don't know if a compliment from McCain means anything on DU, but the Brookings Institute's making this a case study in negotiation that works says something, even if one does not love Brookings.

[marym625]

3. It should make a difference

There are a couple areas where McCain is reasonable. But even if people don't think so, that should mean even more if Sanders can get something passed when working with the unreasonable.

[merrily]

4. Taking care of sick veterans AND making a point about medicare for all AND negotiating successfully

with a hardass. Not bad "for government work."

[marym625]

5. Abso-fucking-lutely!

[raouldukelives]

6. K&R Homeless veterans need our vote. Not our pity.

They need health care, not health insurance.

One President represents taking care of current veterans and not making more.

The others, not so much.

[merrily]

7. The place I lived in right after I got married had been built

as low cost housing for veterans returning from World War II.

Relatively recently, Utah (yes, Utah) built free housing for homeless people, not necessarily veterans, that it provides for free or next to nothing because, as studies have shown, that costs society less than than the financial burden a homeless person places on society. (Yes, we do know that. As a society, we'd simply rather spend more to be punitive to people who probably should be in, at a minimum, halfway houses. Christian nation, my ass.)

Point of the above two paragraphs being: there is no excuse for allowing veterans to be homeless. Especially because the experience to which we subjected them probably caused or contributed to their homelessness.

I hate war, but I hate what we do to veterans. And, I believe that they ought to impose a war tax, as was done in World War II, to pay for all costs of the war, including veterans' benefits. Let's see how many endless wars that lead to more wars they get to start then.