Reply #11: Read more carefully.

[noamnety]

you quoted something about insurance companies having to pay for NONservice related conditions.

The new proposal was for private companies to have to pay for SERVICE-related injuries, which the federal government has an obligation to pick up the tab for.

I didn't understand the problem with this at first - it was only after reading about it on a veterans' board that I "got" it. The issue is that some insurance companies have an annual cap (or lifetime cap) on what they will pay out for a person, or for a family.

So if a vet spends X amount of dollars on a combat related injury - they might use up ALL their benefits, and then when they are sick or injured as a civilian, the insurance company might not be willing to pay anything else for that - in effect leaving the vet (or possibly their family) effectively without insurance at all. (Or some insurance companies might be unwilling to ensure a person and their family altogether if they have serious service-connected conditions that require a ton of care.)

In a nutshell: The folks opposing it understood it didn't require vets to get private insurance - and that it's not a direct charge to the vet. That's not the issue. The issues are: 1) it's unethical for the government to send a person to war, and then shift the burden of care for those war injuries to a private company, and 2) it puts the vet at risk of drying up their insurance payouts on the shit the government should be paying for, leaving them without insurance they might need if something new arises.